UX for Beginners

Chapter 21. Motivation: Understanding (Curiosity)

This is the motivation behind teaser trailers for new movies and your anger when Facebook suddenly changes their features without warning.

Understanding is the motivation to get information about a situation that involves the other 13 motivations. Sometimes we call it curiosity. We are also motivated to protect what we already understand. The funny thing about Understanding is that—even though it’s pretty simple—designers and marketers screw it up all the time.

There are three rules for creating curiosity:

1. The user must understand enough to know there will be a gain or loss in one of the other 13 motivations.

2. The bigger the gain or loss seems to be, the more interesting it becomes.

3. Hold something back.

The illustration for this lesson is similar to the original iPhone’s website. You see just enough to know that it’s better than the not-so-smart phone in your pocket, but the specifics are hidden.

Voilá! You’re curious.

If the iPhone looked like every other phone at the time, you wouldn’t have felt curious, because you wouldn’t “get it.”

How to Screw It Up

The best way to suck at making people curious is to offer them something that isn’t one of the other 13 motivations. Ironically, the most common example of this is a chance to win an iPhone or iPad.

First: everyone already understands an iPhone or an iPad. No curiosity.

Second: it’s only a chance to win something that a lot of people already have (remember that Status is relative to other people.) ...