The Effects of Adding Motivational Elements to User Instructions

This paper gives an overview of three studies that we conducted to investigate the effects of motivational elements in user instructions. We tested for effects on usability, in particular on task effectiveness, task efficiency and user satisfaction. Motivational elements are textual additions or modifications to user instructions with the aim of motivating the reader, without changing the content of the actual instructions. The results of our studies showed that supplying motivation in user instructions can positively affect usability, but the presence of these effects seems to depend on the task at hand and on the characteristics of the user group. Our upcoming studies will focus on reading-to-do situations and on users with low confidence levels.