[userbinator]

Personally, while the research is interesting, I think it's also being far too overused as justification to remove/not add options. The common counterargument of "just use another product that does have the option you want" often turns out to be as fruitless - that other product may not have some option you want (that this one does), due to the same reasoning!

I also fundamentally disagree that removing choices is a good thing - the research says it makes (most?) people feel better, which suggests that they don't want to think about making any choices because it is somehow difficult for them and causes anxiety. Logically, this means they would be most satisfied and happy if they didn't have to make any choices or do any thinking at all, and something/someone else made all the decisions for them - the equivalent of having no freedom or control over one's life. Is this really what we want society to become?

"Making choices is hard, so just give up"? To me, that's where it looks like things are heading, and quite frankly it's a rather disturbing trend. I most definitely do not want to have nearly every decision in my life made by someone else, and find the anxiety/difficulty of the process to be absolutely normal.

Maybe there is a good balance somewhere in between, but I'm definitely strongly biased in the direction of being able to have the freedom to make choices, no matter how difficult, and take control of my life.

[jodrellblank]

I most definitely do not want to have nearly every decision in my life made by someone else, and find the anxiety/difficulty of the process to be absolutely normal.

Approximately every decision that's ever been made and affects you was made by someone else.

From toothpaste formulation to water cleanliness approval standards to mains electric plug standards to zoning regulations, pavement width, tram or train schedules, volumes of alcohol that can be sold, material books are printed on, blend of spices in KFC batter or how long a film is, what goes in an ethernet frame fields, how radio frequencies are licensed, where keyboard input goes through the Mac OS kernel, why your local shops stock X instead of Y...

You don't want the decisions you care about made by other people - who would?

But if you say you want to make nearly every decision that gets made in your life? I don't believe you could, or would want to, if faced with what that really meant.

I don't wan't to decide my own custom HN colour scheme and font size and font face and text colour contrast with background colour and font sub-pixel hinting style and text box resize behaviour interacting with a high-DPI rendered display, and whether the page POST has headers announcing this or that. The defaults chosen by Google Chrome team, Microsoft Windows team and HN designers are all fine.

[Throwaway823]

There is balance but it's not easy to find.

If I visit a restaurant, and they only serve chicken, that's kind of limited. Now, they give me the option of beef or chicken. Ok, this is a decision I can make, and be confident in selecting. Now, what happens if they ask whether I would like northwestern chicken, southern chicken, grain fed chicken, or korean chicken? Huh? I'm not a master of chicken, just give me the best one.

We hit a point where I no longer have a strong opinion, and this is where my confidence drops, and I start to question myself. This means they've given me too much choice.

This isn't the same for everyone, someone out there knows their chicken inside and out, and they have a preference for one specific type. If you want to cater your restaurant towards those people then give them that choice. However, you'll be scaring away the average person at the same time.

For the same reason it's difficult to make an application for casual and advanced users. Pick your audience, and that'll give you some guidance on the appropriate amount of choice to include.

[jodrellblank]

How would you like me to give you the best one? Wine first, delay, then meal? Wine then meal with no delay? Drinks and chicken brought together on a tray?

Cutlery wrapped in a serviette or not? Chicken with sauce or sauce in a jug? Chicken covered in sauce, or with some on it, or with the sauce around it? What temperature sauce? How would you like the plate rotated - chicken towards you, or veg towards you? What kind of veg? How big?

Decisions are fractal, everywhere you look there are potentially huge numbers of decisions that someone, somewhere, might plausibly care about, but most people don't.

Beyond where you don't have a strong opinion (I guess one chicken option might be better, but I don't know which) and your confidence drops, you climb back up to a place where you have a strong opinion again and your opinion is "it doesn't matter [to me]", and from there onwards it's not a matter of "I don't know which to chose" it's a matter of "STOP WASTING MY LIFE WITH THIS POINTLESS NONSENSE".

I suspect that the internet puts people on both sides of this gap together, far more often, more quickly, and with less structure, than previous human history has.

[jngreenlee]

This. > "STOP WASTING MY LIFE WITH THIS POINTLESS NONSENSE".

I work in datacenter solutions sales, and the majority of my customers know what they want in terms of vendor/product series. However, they need our help for specific performance and capacity sizing, as well as adjusting to fit a budget. This probably it true for about 95% of customers.

However, there is another 5%, that simply want a good solution for their needs. They don't care how, and if they're smart, they have some specific business requirements to share. These ones are EASY to upset as displayed in the comment above if we 'waste' their time asking detailed option questions they really don't care about.

To be successful in this, you have to triage early and set the customer engagement on the proper path!

[jasonwocky]

> I also fundamentally disagree that removing choices is a good thing - the research says it makes (most?) people feel better, which suggests that they don't want to think about making any choices because it is somehow difficult for them and causes anxiety. Logically, this means they would be most satisfied and happy if they didn't have to make any choices or do any thinking at all, and something/someone else made all the decisions for them - the equivalent of having no freedom or control over one's life.

You're equivocating removing choices that one ultimately wouldn't make any way (i.e. "false choices") with removing all choice.

> Is this really what we want society to become?

Also slippery-sloping.

[jacobolus]

Note: “equivocating” does not mean “equating”.

[read]

> I also fundamentally disagree that removing choices is a good thing

You may want to revise that perspective. Besides constraints being key to creativity, they are also key to good design. Every design needs to limit options.

Additionally, it doesn't directly follow that society will have their decisions made by other people; and to the extent that it does, it's not necessarily a bad thing.

Once again: fewer options -- constraints -- are key in creativity.