I love TED presentations, they’re great! I was watching a TED talk by Barry Schwartz, and he gave a very intriguing presentation on the effect of choices. I believe it is a great talk for anyone who has influence on UI, in any product or service, since we have to make decisions as to creating a feature (setting) rich environment or a simplistic subset, and the associated opportunity costs.
I really enjoy the points which he makes as to with more options you have more expectations, and are less, if not impossible, to satisfy. No excuse for failure, with choices you do better but feel worse. And while this presentation mostly focuses on consumer choices, such as the quantity of different salad dressings at a super market I believe the basic concept can be applied to most user interactions, from software UI to marketing. To often we provide the user more options than they ever would desire, with the excuse of providing options, when in reality we’re just creating disappointment. This presentation just reenforces my belief that less is more, when considering options.
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I too enjoyed his points and found many right on, however I believe his initial supposition was faulty. I do not believe that the current corporate dogma is to maximize the welfare of our citizens. I believe that the excess of choices was purposely put in place to make people initiate personal freedom less and to create a voracious consumer society.
We are inundated with mundane choices which deal with the insignificant and are a distraction... they confuse us and create a state of panic paralys.
How many of us really care about larning a new operating system, or the hippest tastiest salad dressing, tennis shoe, phone / network etc. We are forced to make these choices as he said to make us feel satisfied. But in reality our time and internal essence is being eaten away with things that don't really matter. Decisions and choices which have very little to do with the quality of our life and the stuff which makes us a person of quality, who lives a rich, joyous and satisfying life.
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