Motivation-Driven Design

I have been reading "The Gamer’s Brain: How Neuroscience and UX Can Impact Video Game Design" by Celia Hodent 🔜 GDC and am so grateful to finally have better terminology to explain often abstract game design concepts. I am particularly thrilled how intrinsic motivation—internal drive—plays a pivotal role in game design. Celia lay outs three core intrinsic motivators shape our experiences: Competency: The desire to feel effective and master challenges. When players experience moments of achievement, they gain a deep sense of purpose and value in their gameplay. Autonomy: Autonomy is about self-direction—the freedom to make choices, experiment, and innovate. It empowers players to explore, create, and leave their unique mark on the game world. Relatedness: This motivation stems from our need to connect and belong. Whether through cooperative play or community engagement, relatedness imbues gaming with a sense of impact and shared experience. I was inspired to map these core motivators into a Venn diagram and create three new sub-categories that cover areas where they converge: Camaraderie (Competency + Relatedness): Mastery paired with connection builds environments where players learn from one another and grow together, whether it is collaborative or competitive. Creativity (Autonomy + Competency): When freedom to explore meets the satisfaction of skill, players are inspired to innovate. This dynamic sparks new ideas and encourages the evolution of gameplay mechanics and metas. Self-Expression (Relatedness + Autonomy): By merging the need for connection with the freedom of choice, games allow players to express their identities. This leads to richer narratives and more personal experiences, and explains the draw of character customization, housing, and UGC. We see these intrinsic motivators at work in wildly successful games like Fortnite (especially with Fortnite Create and UEFN), Valheim, and Minecraft. These platforms empower players not just to play, but to create, share, and connect—resulting in communities that thrive on a wide range of purpose, value, and impact. Extrinsic motivation, on the other hand, is the drive to engage in an activity due to external rewards or pressures rather than personal interest. Extrinsic motivation is influenced by outcomes like points, badges, leaderboards, monetary rewards, or even the avoidance of negative consequences. While extrinsic motivators can be powerful in encouraging short-term engagement or specific behaviors, these external rewards often don't foster the deeper, long-lasting fulfillment that comes from intrinsic motivations. As game developers, it is so important to understand and leverage intrinsic motivations to empower us to provide players meaningful and fulfilling gameplay. How are you supporting these intrinsic motivations in your games? #gamedev #gamedesign #userexperience #indiedev #gameindustry

Veterinary leaders: you can’t buy your way to team motivation. But you can design for it. If your default boost to morale, performance, or turnover is another bonus tweak or pizza party, you’re going to be disappointed. What actually matters? According to recent research, “work design” beats compensation. By work design, I mean the day-to-day job experience architecture. Experiences like decision latitude, task variety, and high-quality feedback (plus clear goals and support to achieve them). Think of it like this - pay is fuel, work design is the engine. More fuel helps but only if the engine is well-designed and functioning. What the study authors found: Teams thrive when people have room to decide, meaningful variety, and fast (productive) feedback loops. When these nutrients are present, motivation and performance rise beyond what pay alone is capable of. Once the job is well designed, piling on variable pay appears to add little and can even backfire if it feels controlling or coercive. Bonuses may buy us moments or motivation. Design builds momentum. The garden grows because you nourished the soil, added light, and provided healthy watering, not because you yelled “grow!” and tossed it a gift card. Get compensation right (e.g., living wage and fair remuneration for the work provided). Just don't stop there. Renovate the work experience too by: 🚦 Embedding decision latitude. Give team members real say in things like case flow, scheduling templates, and problem-solving. 🗣️ Provide meaningful, high-frequency feedback. Build in opportunities for feedback loops. Make one-on-ones (with structure and purpose) a routine element of your operations and culture. 🍨 Enable smart task variety. Cross-train and explore stretch goals with coaching, so people grow without burning out. 🦺 Psychological safety > heroics. Reward early surfacing of issues and course-corrections, not last-minute rescues or "do it on your own" qualities. 💲 Keep pay simple, fair, and transparent. Share ranges and formulas. F avor team-aligned incentives (clinic-level quality, service, and reliability metrics) over individual production schemes that pit colleagues against each other or externalize intrinsic motivation. Design (not bribery) motivation interventions to try this week: 1️⃣ Autonomy sprint: pick one decision that currently needs manager approval and delegate it with clear guardrails; review outcomes on Friday. 2️⃣ Feedback loop: institute a daily 5-minute “wins & blocks” huddle with one micro-metric on the board (e.g., same-day callback closure or cross-trained skill development). 3️⃣ Variety rep: schedule one protected “stretch hour” for each role (cross-train or shadow), followed by a 2-minute debrief capturing one improvement idea for that role's workflow. Great veterinary teams providing great care comes from well-designed work, not bigger carrots. Build the engine for fuel efficiency and watch everyone thrive.

Stop selling importance. Start engineering enjoyment. New cross-year, cross-culture research: people stick with resolutions when the doing feels good now (intrinsic), not when it just matters later (extrinsic). Definitions: • Intrinsic = enjoyable/engaging in the moment • Extrinsic = useful/important, pays off later We tend to choose goals for extrinsic reasons. We stick with goals for intrinsic ones. Study 1 (U.S., n=2,000, 12 months): People set extrinsic-heavy New Year’s resolutions but intrinsic motivation predicted success all year. Extrinsic didn’t. Same study, completion odds: Every 1-pt bump in intrinsic motivation ⇒ +60% higher odds of actually completing the resolution. Extrinsic? ~No relationship. Meta blind spot: People underestimate how much present-moment enjoyment drives persistence especially for themselves. Study 2 (China, n=500): Different culture, different goal mix, same punchline: Intrinsic predicted adherence; extrinsic didn’t. Study 3 (objective behavior): Step counters over 14 days (n=439). A 1 SD increase in intrinsic motivation ≈ +0.34 SD steps (~+1,250 steps/day). Extrinsic? Not significant. Study 4 (experiment, n=763): Frame a health app as fun/game-like vs important/informational. The fun frame produced ~25% more usage in 24h (more scans). You can cause stickiness by designing enjoyment. Core insight: Extrinsic picks the goal. Intrinsic sustains the habit. Importance is the map. Enjoyment is the engine. Design for “fun now,” not just “good later”: • Reframe tasks with tasty/engaging labels • Bundle temptations (podcast + workout) • Add tiny games/streaks/guesses • Make it social (buddy, public mini-wins) Reduce friction & savor wins: • 2-minute start rules, preloaded cues • Rotate micro-variations (route/recipe/playlist) to dodge hedonic decline • Celebrate small reps to keep intrinsic fuel topped up Message templates (intrinsic-first): • Movement: “Find the most enjoyable 10-min route + one new song.” • Food: “Cook a tasty 3-ingredient veg in 8 min share your hack.” • Learning: “Chase one delightful fact you want to tell a friend.” Manager/coach scripts: “Let’s design the most enjoyable version you’d do on a good day without willpower. Try 2 variants this week; keep the one you’d happily repeat.” Weekly self-audit (1–5 scale): • How enjoyable was today’s rep? • What’s one tweak to raise enjoyment by +1 next week? One-liners to remember: • Enjoyment is the engine; importance is the map. • Design habits you’d do without willpower.

Most leaders obsess over features and roadmaps. This is a mistake. Leadership is about psychology. Yes your technology matters. Your service's are what get bought and drive your revenue. No doubt. But the real leverage? >> Understanding what drives human behavior >> both in your consumers and in your teams. That’s why all Leaders (Especially product leaders) Should Care About Self-Determination Theory (SDT) from Ed Deci, PhD and Richard M Ryan, PhD. It tells us that people thrive when three psychological needs are met: Autonomy – the sense of choice and control. Competence – the feeling of mastery and progress. Relatedness – the connection to others and shared purpose. Now apply this lens in two directions: 1. Your Users Autonomy: Design products that empower choice and give people a sense of control. Competence: Give feedback loops that help them feel progress and make incremental investments. Relatedness: Build communities, rituals, and shared identity around your products. 2. Your Teams Autonomy: Trust your engineers and designers by empowering decision-making and work to eliminate micromanagement. Competence: Invest in skill growth and celebrate progress, not just outcomes. Create an adaptable team. Relatedness: Create bonds beyond Jira tickets. Share wins, create the stories. measure relationships. Here’s the kicker: When you align SDT for both users and teams, you designing for intrinsic motivation. That’s how momentum compounds. And SDT is one of the sharpest tools you can put in your kit. I have the deep honor of presenting some of these ideas at the INDUSTRY leadership forum (Mind the Product) on September 8th in #Cleveland and intend to have a meaningful conversation with John Cutler there on these ideas. Sean Murray and Daniel Sharp will be interviewing him for the ITX Corp. podcast. I can't wait. I'll also be sharing some of these concepts for Mind the Product in #NewYork & #Chicago in October if you can't make Cleveland! Links in the comments. I would love to hear your thoughts/challenges on the importance of understanding motivation in the comments below. #Momentum #SelfDeterminationTheory #SDT #SoftwareProductLeadership

Are you segmenting users by who they are, or why they use your product? This week I had Nesrine Changuel, PhD on the Product Thinking podcast to discuss her new book, Product Delight. One insight completely shifted how I think about user segmentation. Most teams segment by demographics (age, company size) or behavior (usage patterns, feature adoption). But Nesrine argues the most impactful segmentation is motivational: understanding why users actually choose your product. As she puts it, "it's really important to list both the functional motivators and the emotional motivators so that we can create solutions that honor for both." Two enterprise customers might look identical demographically, but one uses your product to reduce manual work (efficiency-driven) while another wants complete visibility into every process (control-driven). Same demographic, completely different product needs. This connects to her three pillars of delight: removing friction, anticipating needs, and exceeding expectations. When you understand the emotional and functional "why" behind user behavior, you can build features that truly resonate. How are you currently segmenting your users? Are you capturing the motivational drivers that actually influence their decisions?