Motivate the Existent

Like any ambitious entrepreneurs, or perhaps like any arrogant younglings in this modern society, my business team made some assumptions.

Our soon-to-be product, a gamification platform aiming to engage people with real-world issues through competition, was designed before any research was done! Oh the shame! The researchers shiver in their sleep! But we pushed through, and as expected, our results confirmed our assumptions, allowing us to steam ahead even faster. However, while our results answered some questions, it also made us think, and ponder and question once again. Gotta love science eh?

Our experiment was simple, we presented people with twelve subtly different cards, all images of a ranking system, with the participant ranked in the middle between two friends. We would ask the participant to order these cards into three piles based on how motivated or demotivated the different representations of their score made them feel. Some cards were realistically scaled, some were unrealistic. Some cards had lettered ranks, extra information and showed the average score for the entire world, some cards showed none of this. This diversity was designed very carefully, and what we found was interesting, though not that surprising.

Card "B" an unrealistic, yet appealing way to be ranked.

The most motivating card was the one with the most goals.  Card “B” as shown above contained the participant’s score up top, with each person on the ladder also possessing their own rank, the lower the rank the better. I suspect this card was chosen because of the diversity of information and the ability to visualise the future feelings of success in many ways. The rank below the participant’s name was connected to its own goal, the goal of becoming first. While the visual position of the participant on the ladder compared to their friends was its own goal as well. Many people who participated in this experiment also said that adding the world average into this particular representation would have made it more motivating. This effect seems to be deep rooted in our psychology.

We speculated further and created a simple rule: People are more motivated by extra possibilities for positive comparison.

The rank, the comparison to friends, the score, the city average, and even the world average, all give people the capacity for positive comparison. But this doesn’t stop a depressed pessimist from finding the demotivating factors in card “B” (as some anecdotal data we collected has shown), though they are unlikely to play the game in the first place.

This image is amazingly pessimistic. Disorientating and demotivating.

Looking back I realise that this is the way I motivate myself. The times when I am most willing to continue something, is when I can see the detail in where I stand. Just this week, the microbiology lecturer showed us a breakdown of how students scored overall. And while some people, especially those who failed, would be disheartened, with my 'decent' performance I found my mantra shifted, I was comparing myself to others in the room, I felt good, but I also felt like I could improve. I wanted to 'win'.

This is not true for all people. Card "B" while overwhelmingly popular, is just that, 'popular'. Motivation, we have found, is deeply rooted in past experience. When I performed this same experiment on a passer-by at my local shops, he did not place any cards into the motivating pile. When I asked him why, he simply replied "Games ruined my life." So I smiled that awkward smile, and thanked him for his time. At least I learned something, and didn't give this poor chap mobile-game-Vietnam flashbacks in vain. People vary far more than we expect. Maybe that should be rule 2?

With that now in mind, we have a whole second set of data to gawk at! The demotivators!

Card "L" a minimalistic card. Enough said.

Card "J" a disturbingly realistic card.

Makes you think about your place in the world.

Or not, I don't really know.

The most demotivating cards were card “J” and card “L” shown above. But each seems to be demotivating in its own way. Card “L” is simply the opposite of card “B”. Lacking in almost all detail. This representation of the participant’s score is not even that, not even a representation (it is not realistically scaled). Such a lack of detail makes it impossible for people to visualise their goals, to imagine what it would look like or feel like to improve.

Card “J”, however, is an interesting case. It is a realistic representation of scores in the world, but it also, only includes the world average. While we can only speculate, I feel it has something to do with existentialism. There is so much space between you and your apparent goal, you cannot help but feel a little bit overwhelmed with the task at hand when looking at this card. Even Forbes suggests that you should start small. This card forces you to look at the big picture as it is.

This speculation, if I’m right, leads to some interesting concepts about philosophy, and entrepreneurship. Being an entrepreneur is not just about being an opportunistic, business-minded individual, it is even more heavily characterised by the motivation entrepreneurs can draw upon in order to accomplish their goals. There is a reason why many of the biggest problems humanity has ever faced, and is currently facing, are not being tackled by entrepreneurs alone.

Of course entrepreneurs try their best to solve ‘problems’ such as income inequality, but their lack of an existential view on the issue, or perhaps an existential view’s lack of motivational potential, leads to these talented people chasing after shadows. Trying to tackle inequality by educating a minuscule number of people will not solve the problem of a privatised and monetised education system, or stop capitalism’s desire for an ignorant, impulsive population. (Check out this delicious right-wing propaganda for more details!)

But how can we have the best of both worlds? The large scale change with the small scale motivation? That is where Catch (our business) hopes to succeed! By using the motivating qualities of card "B", we hope that more people will be ready and willing to solve the real problems humanity faces, now and into the future.

But will we succeed? Another question, another fun little experiment, I almost can’t wait!