The ARCS Model of Motivational Design has been used myriad times to design motivational instructions that focus on Attention, Relevance, Confidence, and Satisfaction in order to motivate students. The Instructional Materials Motivation Survey (IMMS) is a 36-item situational measure of people's reactions to instructional materials in the light of the ARCS Model. Although the IMMS has been used often, both as a pre-test and a posttest tool serving as either a motivational needs assessment prior to instruction or a measure of people's reactions to instructional materials afterwards, the IMMS so far has not been validated extensively, taking statistical and theoretical aspects of the survey into account. This article describes such an extensive validation study, for which the IMMS was used in a self-directed instructional setting aimed at working with technology (a cellular telephone). Results of structural equation modeling (SEM) show that the IMMS can be

Should instructional texts be purely technical, with a focus on effectiveness and efficiency, or should they also focus on satisfying and motivating users? Good arguments have been made for paying attention to motivational aspects. But only analyses of existing instructions have been published so far, and guidelines for making user instructions motivational have not yet been studied carefully. This article presents motivational strategies and an experiment to test their effects. The results show that motivational elements have little effect on users’ effectiveness and efficiency in performing tasks, their product appreciation, and their self-efficacy, but they do increase users’ appreciation for the instructions.

Research problem:The purpose of this study was to investigate the effects of two types of motivational elements-verification steps and personal stories-in an instruction manual for a cell phone targeted at senior users (between 60 and 70 years). Research questions: What are the effects of adding verification steps and personal stories to an instruction manual on: (1) Seniors' confidence in being able to work with a cell phone? (2) Seniors' motivation to work with a cell phone? (3) Seniors' effectiveness and efficiency in performing tasks, and their satisfaction with the cell phone and the instruction manual (usability)? Literature review: To optimize products and services for older users, the literature suggests that two specific motivational elements may be beneficial: (1) verification steps, which provide information at the end of procedures to allow users to check if these procedures were performed correctly. These appear to users as part of conventional procedural information in user instructions and (2) personal stories, which are anecdotes or testimonials that describe how a fictitious user succeeded in completing a procedure. Methodology: We conducted a quantitative experiment in which 59 seniors between 60 and 70 years of age participated. They performed a number of tasks with a cell phone, using a version of the instruction manual with added verification steps, or a version with additional personal stories, or a control version without motivational elements. We measured participants' confidence, their motivation, and usability by asking them to answer several questionnaires and by measuring task performance. Results and conclusions: Results support the use of verification steps or personal stories as motivational elements in user instructions as they can positively affect confidence, motivation, and usability, especially when senior users encounter setbacks.

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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.