What Lies Beneath: The Foundations of Motivation in the Age of Social Media

In this talk, I'll focus on the deep motivations that drive so many to create, interact, and collaborate on Facebook, StackExchange, Wikipedia, Twitter, and countless other sites. As social media have become the Internet's driving force, questions about motivation and incentives have come to the forefront. Motivation, however, is hard to talk about and harder to measure. In this talk I discuss some of the problems with current models of motivation that are enshrined in trends like 'gamification.' However, I'll argue that focusing on underlying social psychological motivations presents important opportunities for research and design, and finish by discussing how I am bringing this perspective to Facebook.

Speaker: Judd Antin, User Experience Researcher, Facebook

Room 250