Payal Kadakia [Archive.org URL]

There’s a behavioral design professor at Stanford, BJ Fogg, who has developed a model that says for any behavior in the world to occur, you need three things to happen at the same time: motivation, ability and a trigger. Motivation can play off of many things, like pleasure or pain, hope or fear. Ability refers to how easy it is to execute the behavior. And the trigger is that final impetus to click or buy.

It’s easy, though, to get stuck on one or two of these factors, and build off of an incomplete equation, thus missing the big picture. […] Don’t underinvest on the motivation factor, especially because it’s frequently the hardest to pin down. Technology can help build the ability. And marketing can help build the trigger. But motivation really comes from understanding your customers.

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