Beyond Maslow’s pyramid

Introducing a typology of thirteen fundamental needs.

Fundamental needs are the psychological needs that every person in the world, regardless of culture, background, and personality. Over the years, many typologies of fundamental needs have been proposed. Probably the best-known is Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, a.k.a Maslow’s pyramid (although he never called it that himself). Although it has not lost its popularity even after many decades, we believed that a new typology of needs would do better justice to more recent scientific insights and would be more actionable for practitioners. In this scientific paper, we explain the rationale and development of this typology of thirteen fundamental needs. In the last part, we give examples of how the new typology can help designers and developers.