Whenever I see one of those “Top ten designs of the year” or
“Eight keys to good navigation design” I usually rip into them. It’s really not that I am a negative
person. It is just that they always tend
to be so overly simplistic. They underappreciate
the importance of context or completely misunderstand human behavior.
So it was really great to read Paul Olyslager’s recent post
on the “9 Common misconceptions about users.”
One or two of them are common knowledge, but they are all spot on. I want to share a few of the really good ones
and perhaps add a few cents of value of my own.
His first one is perhaps the best. Users want choices. One of the primary motivations that drive
human behavior is the need for perceived autonomy (see my gamification posts
for more on that). We crave feeling in
control of our lives and our decisions. Having options is a salient signal to
ourselves that we are in control. In
fact a recent TED talk by Alex Wissner-Gross makes the (a little too far
reaching) claim that the best measure of intelligence is the ability to keep
your options open.
Unfortunately, it doesn’t end there. Designers make a huge mistake by taking this
as a maxim and giving users tons of choices.
This leads to many negative outcomes.
Because users also hate cognitive load.
If making a decision among all of these options feels like a lot of work
we absolutely hate it. That is not perceived
autonomy, that is perceived helplessness.
Sheena Iyengar (about whom I have blogged before) calls this choice
paralysis.
There is also the strong likelihood of loss aversion. While making the decision we worry that we
might make the wrong decision. And we
HATE that because it reduces perceived competence (another one of those
fundamental motivations). Then after the
decision we are susceptible to post-decision regret, also known as buyer’s
remorse. The only thing worse than being
forced into an option is being forced to live with that outcome afterwards,
always wondering (or knowing for sure) that another option would have been
better. Some of us have this more than
others (who Barry Schwartz calls “maximizers” in the fantastic book (and TEDtalk of the same name) the Paradox of Choice), but most of us have it to some
extent.
And all of this just in his first misconception. Thanks for the great post Paul.
