Difficulty of choice
IT industry is constantly evolving. The number of similar products that compete with each other has grown. The choice for users has become greater than ever, but the prefer not to think about the choice.
Users select once. After that, they always come to this decision, whether it’s a subscription or coffee at Starbucks.
In Starbucks everything is individualized, they will bring to you coffee to with your name. When the coffee company started offering a big choice on the market, the company economy overtook another American company Ford.
The market began to offer a big choice — cable TV, different colors of cars. More choices should have help to satisfy consumers, but it didn’t work out that way. In coffee houses, people began to order the same coffee every day, people chose one news channel on the TV and always watch it.
People don’t want to think, they want to get a finished product and solve their problem.
A great example of a product without a choice is the LOT2046, where one time per month you get a set of things by subscription. You don’t choose things, they are sent to you by the owners of the company who thought about you.
Stop making the user think. You should help him with the choice
Just be careful, the lack of choice should be justified, and not be a restriction for the user. The best way out is to create a UX with a choice, and then remove the excess. Doing research is fun.
I am an interface designer and i can transfer this microtrend about the choice to interfaces.
Chats
Example, chat. Chat on a site where you can ask a question. Many platforms add a panel with a lot of emoji. We all love emoji, but not in chat on the site. Why show so many emoji? Show emoji that can display positive and negative emotions, you can also add tips next to the emoji, which will include popular questions when entering the chat.
Avatars
As a second example, I want to say about avatars in services. In most cases, you need to upload your photo and nothing else. You go to the album and start choosing your favorite photo. A good example in MacOS, where you can choose one of the default ones as the avatar of the system user. I use emoji services for avatars that are gender and race-neutral and the user can choose from 8–10 avatars. So we preserve individuality and reduce the time of choice, between popcorn and a ball it’s easier to choose than between the 1000 photos.
But still, you need to leave the opportunity to upload your photo. This may be important for the user. Our task is to please everyone, most will choose emoji, some will upload a photo — everyone is happy
If we consider the physical world, we can imagine a coffee house where there is no choice of coffee. You just come to the cafe and choose — with or without milk, with or without syrup. And the barista himself chooses coffee for you. As a result, every day you try something new without spending the effort to choose.
In, conclusion
Reducing the time of choice is a very important thing in the modern world, but it’s also important to maintain personalization because it is important for users.
