(2018-07-15) How To Motivate Users To Complete A Difficult Task

How to Motivate Users to Complete a Difficult Task - Modus Create

An AirBNB UX Process Redesign Concept

filling out forms suck. and if the form also asks you to take a photo of a document that you don’t have anywhere near you, and then upload it to the platform, that simply is not going to happen.

hosts can request that guests upload their legal identification before booking

However, this is not required when opening an account to be an AirBNB guest.

The Challenge

Increase the success of the guest booking process in situations where identification is required. To achieve this we must make the task simpler and improve the guests’ motivation to submit the required documents.

Step by Step

1. Reduce Effort by Breaking Up the Task

The famous foot-in-the-door technique: getting a person to agree to a large request is easier by having them agree to a modest request first. Like wise, it’s much easier to ask users to complete one small task at a time than asking them to complete one giant task, so always divide large difficult tasks into smaller steps.

2. Reduce stress by showing progress

starting users off with a progress bar that’s almost 1/3rd completed

3. Make it easy

users more than one method to perform the task, allowing the user to choose the most comfortable option

recommendation of the easiest option to finish the task.

4. Reward users’ good behavior

In your own product always try to find and use those intrinsic rewards that users could obtain by using your UI. For example, for Airbnb an intrinsic motivation could be to have access to better apartments, and therefore better vacations

When it comes to tasks that users do not want to do, especially the infrequent ones, the use of extrinsic rewards are a safe option, because there are no pre-existing behaviors that could be demotivated or eliminated by giving rewards.

offers rewards

5. Be playful

The real purpose of gamification is to use fun to motivate people towards certain behaviors.

The easiest one is making the language funnier: using clever jokes, funny quotes or simply adding a little bit of irony to your instructions

using animations

I also added an animation that shows a guest on her way to meet the host and his home. Every time the user completes a step of the task the animation also shows progress: the door starts to open and finally the host greets the guest with a smile

animation creates expectation: “What is behind the door?

animation reduces frustration and abandonment