On Overchoice
Users usually like choices. Except when the choices become overwhelming.
Quote
From Wikipedia:
Overchoice is the cognitive process where people have a hard time making a decision when faced with too many options. Offering too many equally good options becomes mentally drawing, because each option needs to be weighed against the alternatives. People tend to feel more pressure, confusion, and potentially dissatisfaction with their choice. Although larger choice sets can be initially appealing, smaller choice sets leads to increased satisfaction and reduced regret.
Some implications for community design:
- One of the dangers and challenges of a community such as ours is not in offering too much, but in organizing it within too many choices. Users need to be able to navigate with a clear and simple design, and part of that means constantly considering the dangers of adding 'yet another' new category or section.
- How experienced users navigate is very different than how new users navigate. Experienced users have a clear preference on where to go, so even when presented with 100 choices, they won't have the issue of cognitive dissonance since they will feel assured in their decision. New users, on the other hand, will experience cognitive dissonance because they're not sure if they made the right decision.
I was chatting with another community admin who offered 130+ categories (!) in one of his resource directories. While offering some choices is good, offering that many can be overwhelming. Most humans can process 3 - 4 choices for a simple decision and 5 - 7 choices for a more involved decision, but 130 is too much.
- 1
- 1
2 Comments
Recommended Comments