100 Things Every Designer Needs to Know About People, 2nd Edition

62 People are Motivated by Autonomy

How many times in a typical day or week do you go to a self-serve website or product—an ATM, the website to renew your car registration, or a banking app? How many products do you use that allow you to do things yourself rather than having to go through another person?

You’ve probably heard people complain about self-service (“What happened to the good old days when you could talk to an actual person?”), especially older people who remember the days before self-service. But people actually like to be independent, to feel that they’re doing things on their own with minimal help from others. People like to do things the way they want to do them and when they want to do them. People like autonomy.

Autonomy ...