A day out of the office

Last week I was part of an ‘expert panel’ arranged by Pure Usability as part of a web site redesign process. I wasn’t particularly looking forward to the day (being full of cold and more than usually grumpy) but was pleasantly surprised at how it managed to be interactive and engaging throughout.

We took part in a range of activities including critiquing the existing site, discussing our patterns of use, designing our ‘ideal’ web sites, examining and prioritising our organisational affiliations, and a categorisation exercise. We were even allowed to use coloured pens and drawing paper. All good.

Of particular interest to me, however, was the model of motivation we were introduced to, which I had not come across before, and used six factors of motivation visualised as a spider diagram. These factors were: achievement, power, respect, novelty, beauty and meaning. I’ve not been able to find out where this model comes from, although there are clearly similarities with the esteem and self-actualisation components of Maslow’s Theory of Human Motivation.

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