How to Make User Instructions Motivational
Steehouder, M., & Loorbach, N. (2004). How to Make User Instructions Motivational. Paper presented at the International Professional Communication Conference 2004, Minneapolis.
Good technical instructions are often viewed as ‘cool, concise and professional’, but there are good arguments to pay attention to their persuasive and motivational aspects as well. Until now, only analyses of existing instructions have been published, while guidelines for making instructions motivational are not yet studied carefully. In this paper we present four strategies that can be followed, and an experiment that was meant to test the effects. The results show that motivational elements do increase the user’s appreciation of the instructions, but have no effect on performance, self efficacy, or appreciation of the product. However, there are indications that further research may show effects.
This paper is based upon Nicole Loorbach's MSc final reserach project
Click here to download the paper
A detailed report of the study has been published in Journal of Business and Technical Communication (2006). Click here to see the details of this publication