Why Most Engagement Strategies Fail—and How Motivational Interviewing Can Help

As someone who used to head up product for a company many years ago, I was constantly being pushed to drive engagement - I think every designer or product manager I know can relate to this.

People would download your products and then they either drop off, or after using them for a while they would not come back. You sit with your teams, look at the data, talk to the users, implement the changes they asked for and then… still no progress.

I think this is what started to push me to better understand behavior and to go beyond the surface to see what the root causes could be - because what ever we were doing was just not enough - there was a gap here and I needed to understand why.

Many years later, I’m still on the (learning) road to behavior change - but with better tools to work from and to support product and design teams with - who can use those tools to help their customers and employees.

I want to say that while I think most designers and product people today can deliver really great experiences - following tried and true principles - they still may not have a deep understanding of behavior and the tools they could be using to help them with engagement.

Why? - because they are not very accesible, easy to translate and widely talked about or easy to find if you don’t know what you are looking for - it’s much easier to talk social proof than to talk about how to develop a feature to support eliciting a perspective that will help to drive autonomy.

Me at WTM London circa 2017 showcasing the Apps we had delivered

In this article I wanted to share one of those rarely talked about components of engagement that we use to help teams design for engagement and behavior change - it is one the many components we combine and have in our toolbox called Motivational Interviewing.

I had an article on it a few months back, which was co-authored by Anna-Zsofia Csantos talking about how it could be used for UX research - and she even gave a talk about it last year - you can read that one here

A Quick Recap on The Drivers of Change

COM-B Model by Michie and Colleagues

Before diving into motivational interviewing, it's important to remind you that several layers are needed to understand what drives behavior in the first place. The first layer of understanding should focus on the drivers to behavior change (outside your product).

While you can use different models to do this, I will highlight the COM-B model to make it easier to understand. (developed by Susan Michie and colleagues at University College London) - you don’t have to use COM-B - but I like the fact that it looks at the following factors:

• Capability: The knowledge and skills to perform a behavior

• Opportunity: The resources and social support to enable the behavior

• Motivation: The desire and reasons to act

Once we have identified the factors and we can design for the capability and opportunity we have to move on the most challenging part - the motivation piece.

When we move to motivation, we need to apply a second layer of analysis—one that looks at both the underlying psychological needs (what I call the motivation architecture: autonomy, progress, and community), and the immediate, in-the-moment drivers of behavior, which models like PRIME theory help us understand.

Once we have accounted for these two layers - we can then use other components - like gamification, personalization and in this article - motivational interviewing (MI).

What is Motivational Interviewing

Motivational interviewing (MI) was originally developed by clinical psychologist William Miller in the 1980s as a client-centered counseling approach to help individuals navigate behavior change by resolving ambivalence. Later, in collaboration with Stephen Rollnick, they refined it into a focused approach to motivate clients in changing specific behaviors.

While MI originated in clinical settings for addressing substance use disorders, its applications have expanded dramatically—from healthcare to education, coaching, and as I am writing about it now - product design. What makes it so versatile is its fundamental respect for human autonomy and its effectiveness at uncovering intrinsic motivation.

The Pull vs Push of Behavior Change

At its core, motivational interviewing is "a collaborative, goal-oriented style of communication designed to strengthen personal motivation." Unlike traditional approaches that tell users what they should do, motivational interviewing focuses on understanding their perspective, exploring their values, and helping them discover their own reasons for change. (and again we are using this once we have made sure that the capability and the environment have been already accounted for)

Think of communication as a dance rather than a tug-of-war. In a tug-of-war, you're pulling users toward your desired outcome while they resist. The harder you pull, the harder they pull back. In a dance, you're moving together, responding to each other's cues, and collaboratively creating something new.

This distinction is crucial in developing products . When we design experiences that push users toward a behavior they're ambivalent about, we create resistance. But when we design experiences that help users explore their own motivations and make autonomous choices, we create momentum.

Motivational interviewing becomes particularly powerful in three scenarios that product designers regularly face:

1. When users feel ambivalent about change (e.g., "I know I should save more money, but I also want to enjoy life now")

2. When users lack confidence in their ability to change (e.g., "I've tried to learn coding before and failed")

3. When users question the importance of change (e.g., "Is meditating really worth the time investment?")

Sound familiar? These scenarios represent the everyday challenges that product teams may be facing when thinking about engagement.

Designing for Intrinsic Motivation

When we design for engagement, we want to focus on internal or intrinsic reasons for action. Self-Determination Theory (SDT), developed by psychologists Edward Deci and Richard Ryan, offers a helpful framework for understanding the spectrum of motivation.

Ryan - Deci - Motivation Continuum

As the continuum shows, motivation ranges from:

• Amotivation: No motivation to act

• Extrinsic motivation: Acting due to external pressures or rewards

• Intrinsic motivation: Acting because the activity itself is inherently satisfying

Digital products tend to rely heavily on extrinsic motivators—badges, points, streaks, and other rewards. But we know that these external motivators often fail to sustain long-term engagement. (I am not saying that you don’t use them)

The goal of applying motivational interviewing in product design is to move users rightward on this continuum—helping them discover and connect with their intrinsic motivations for using your product. This creates the foundation for sustainable engagement that persists even when external rewards fade.

How to use Motivational Interviewing in Product Design

Let's explore how motivational interviewing can transform your approach to product design.

1. Expressing Empathy

Empathy in motivational interviewing means genuinely understanding and accepting a user's perspective without judgment. It's about acknowledging that their concerns and hesitations are valid, even if they differ from what you think is "best" for them.

Consider a fitness app where a user hasn't logged a workout in weeks. A typical product might send a guilt-inducing notification: "You're falling behind on your goals!"

A motivational interviewing approach would instead acknowledge: "Finding time for exercise can feel like an extra burden with everything going on in your life. We understand how challenging that can be."

This shift might seem subtle, but it creates a fundamentally different emotional response. Instead of triggering defensiveness, it creates a sense of being understood, which opens the door to exploration and change.

2. Developing Discrepancy

This principle involves helping users see the gap between their current behavior and their broader goals or values—but in a way that leads to self-discovery rather than shame.

In practice, this might look like a financial app that asks reflective questions: "You mentioned wanting to save for a house down payment. How do you feel your current spending patterns align with that goal?" This approach invites users to draw their own conclusions about the discrepancy, rather than the app explicitly pointing it out.

The key is to help users recognize these gaps themselves, which is far more powerful than having them pointed out externally. This self-discovery process builds intrinsic motivation—the kind that actually sustains behavior change.

3. Rolling with Resistance

When users resist change, our instinct is often to push harder. Motivational interviewing takes the opposite approach: it accepts resistance as natural and responds with flexibility rather than force.

In product design, this might mean offering multiple pathways instead of a single "correct" one. For example, a meditation app might say: "It's okay if you're not ready for a 10-minute session. Would you prefer to start with a 1-minute breathing exercise, read about meditation benefits, or just explore the app?"

By acknowledging resistance and offering choices, we defuse defensiveness and maintain user autonomy—two critical factors for sustained engagement.

4. Supporting Self-Efficacy

Self-efficacy is a person's belief in their ability to succeed in specific situations. In motivational interviewing, we strengthen this belief by highlighting capabilities, past successes, and small wins.

For a language learning app, this might look like: "You've already mastered 25 words this week—that's impressive progress! Each word you learn builds your vocabulary foundation." This approach reinforces the user's capacity for change and builds confidence in their ability to achieve their goals.

Some Examples - Financial Wellness App: Maria's Journey

(Note that more contextulisation and nuance is needed in a real project beyond what I am showing you here - don’t just copy this blindly.

I built all these screens using Lovable last night - so while they may not be 100% optimised, and I notices some slight misspellings, I wanted to show some visual examples to help illustrate.

I ended up building a whole financial wellbeing app - will show more if it it in my new course on designing for engagement that will be released next month.)

Maria has downloaded a budgeting app hoping to improve her financial situation. She's feeling overwhelmed by her student loans and wants to start saving, but has struggled with impulse spending. (Remember to develop good behavioral archetypes for your design)

1. Expressing Empathy: During onboarding, the app acknowledges: "Managing finances while balancing student loans and daily expenses can feel overwhelming. Many people find it challenging to balance current enjoyment with future security."

Expressing Empathy

2. Developing Discrepancy: Instead of prescribing immediate budget cuts, the app might ask: "You mentioned wanting to save for a home someday. How do you feel your current spending patterns align with that long-term goal?"

Developing Discrepancy

3. Rolling with Resistance: When Maria skips entering expenses for several days, instead of a guilt-inducing notification, the app offers options: "Would you prefer to do a quick weekly summary instead of daily tracking, or would a different time of day for reminders work better for you?"

Rolling with Resistance

4. Supporting Self-Efficacy: After Maria successfully stays within budget for a week, the app might note: "You've managed to align your spending with your priorities for a full week—that kind of intentional decision-making is exactly what builds financial stability."

Supporting Self-Efficacy

How You Can Get Started with MI

Here are some practical steps:

1. Audit your product's language and interactions. Look for instances of "pushing" language—should, must, need to—and consider how you might reframe these to emphasize choice and exploration.

2. Deepen your user research. Go beyond understanding what users want to do; explore their ambivalence, their intrinsic motivations, and their personal values. What matters to them beyond the specific behavior your product enables?

3. Redesign key moments of friction. Identify where users typically abandon your product or resist taking action. How might you approach these moments with empathy, roll with resistance, and support self-efficacy?

4. Evolve your metrics. If you're only measuring short-term engagement, you might optimize for pushing rather than guiding. Consider metrics that capture sustainable behavior change and user satisfaction.

5. Start small. You don't need to overhaul your entire product at once. Begin by applying one principle to a specific feature or user flow, and observe the results.

These are some of the ways we help teams deliver better experiences - not just with MI - but with the components in our toolbox.

Some Closing Thoughts

In a products that are increasingly being made to have more and more features to compete for the user attention, the differentiator isn't who can push users hardest—it's who can most effectively help users align product usage with their own values and goals.

You will have a higher chance of doing this if you are able to apply a deep understanding of behavior to your work - this is how we approach it.

Motivational interviewing is one of the components we use to help teams improve or create new products that do more than drive short-term metrics. It enables we design experiences that genuinely support meaningful change while respecting their autonomy and agency.

My hope is that in the next years, the most successful products won't be those that most effectively manipulate behavior through psychological tricks. They'll be those that most effectively help users discover and pursue what truly matters to them.

---

If you don’t know me, I’m Robert Meza a practitioner who is running a consultancy called Aim For Behavior - I teach courses and work with clients around the world on fun but challenging behavioral focused projects.

Have a great day, Robert