Design problem
Too many options
People stall, pick nothing, or pick the first thing they see rather than the right thing.
How you know you have it
- Support asks which plan or setting they should choose, repeatedly.
- A menu or settings page grows every quarter and nothing is ever removed.
- Analytics show a long tail of options nobody uses, and one option carrying most of the traffic.
- People abandon at the moment of choosing rather than at the moment of paying.
Do these first
- 1Set a real default, and say why it is the default.
- 2Group options by the decision they belong to, not by feature area.
- 3Move rarely used options behind a disclosure rather than deleting them outright.
- 4Check whether two options actually differ in outcome. If not, it is one option.
Why it happens
Every option is presented at the same weight
When nothing is recommended, defaulted or grouped, the reader has to evaluate the whole set. The cost is not the number of options on its own, it is the number of comparisons they imply.
Options that differ on hidden dimensions
Three plans that differ on eight attributes are not three choices. People cope by picking on the one attribute they understand, usually price.
Internal structure leaking into the interface
Settings grouped by which team built them, not by what the reader is trying to change.
What to read, and why
Choice problems are decision-time problems first and layout problems second, so the reasoning entries come before the patterns that implement a fix.
Why it behaves this way
8The mechanism underneath the symptom. Read these when the fix needs justifying to somebody else.
Hick's Law
Decision time grows logarithmically with the number of equally likely choices, so the tenth option costs far less than the second.
LawEstablished research
Choice Overload
More options can reduce satisfaction and completion, but the effect is much less reliable than the popular version suggests.
PsychologyMixed evidence
Decision Fatigue
The claim that decision quality degrades over a sequence of choices. Popular, intuitive, and on much shakier experimental ground than its usage suggests.
PsychologyMixed evidence
Miller's Law
Working memory holds a small number of chunks, so the design lever is what counts as a chunk, not the raw item count.
LawEstablished research
Default Effect
Most people accept whatever is preselected, which makes defaults the most powerful control in an interface.
Cognitive biasEstablished research
Decoy Effect
Adding a deliberately inferior third option changes which of the original two people choose.
Cognitive biasEstablished research
Occam's Razor
Among competing solutions that meet the requirement, prefer the one with fewest assumptions and moving parts.
PrincipleCraft convention
Pareto Principle
A small share of features carries most of the use, which is a prompt to go and measure rather than an excuse to cut.
PrincipleCraft convention
The craft decisions
4The visual and structural levers that produce or relieve this problem.
Visual Hierarchy
The order in which elements are noticed, controlled by size, weight, colour, position and space.
UI foundationCraft convention
Emphasis
Making one thing stand out, which only works if most things do not.
UI foundationCraft convention
Common Region
A shared boundary or background binds elements together more strongly than proximity does.
UI foundationEstablished research
Proximity
Things placed close together are read as belonging together, before anything is read.
UI foundationEstablished research
Patterns that address it
4Recognised solutions, with the conditions under which each earns its place.
Progressive Disclosure
Show the common case first and reveal the rest on request, so complexity is available without being present.
PrincipleExpert heuristic
Filtering
Narrowing a large set by attributes, which is what makes large catalogues navigable at all.
PatternCraft convention
Comparison
Putting options side by side so differences can be seen rather than remembered.
PatternCraft convention
Command Palette
A searchable list of every action, which serves novices as discovery and experts as an accelerator.
PatternCraft convention
Components involved
3States, behaviour and the accessibility contract you will need to specify.
Select
Choosing one option from a known set, which is the wrong control below about five options.
ComponentCraft convention
Radio Group
One choice from a small visible set, where seeing all the options is the point.
ComponentCraft convention
Menu
A list of actions revealed on demand, which is where infrequent operations belong.
ComponentCraft convention
Language
2Where the words carry more of the fix than the layout does.
Microcopy
The small pieces of text that do most of the work: labels, hints, empty states, errors and confirmations.
UX writingCraft convention
Content Design
Deciding what content a user needs and in what order, which is a design activity rather than a writing one.
UX writingCraft convention
Accessibility requirements
2The requirements this problem raises, mapped to the decisions that produce them.
Keyboard Navigation
Everything must be operable with a keyboard alone, which is the single most load-bearing accessibility requirement.
AccessibilityCraft convention
Labels and Instructions
Every input needs a persistent label, and format requirements must be stated before the user types.
AccessibilityCraft convention
How to find out
3Methods suited to confirming the cause before you commit to a fix.
Card Sorting
Asking users to group content, which reveals their mental model of a domain rather than your org chart.
Research methodEstablished research
Tree Testing
Testing whether people can find things in a structure, with no visual design to confound the result.
Research methodEstablished research
A/B Testing
Comparing variants with real traffic, which tells you what happened without telling you why.
Research methodEstablished research
Check your work
2Interactive review passes, with progress saved in your browser.
UX Audit Checklist
A structured pass across the whole product, organised by the same categories as the audit tool.
ChecklistExpert heuristic
SaaS Product Checklist
Accounts, teams, permissions, billing and the surfaces every SaaS product needs and few design well.
ChecklistCraft convention
Decisions other teams made
1Worked cases, including the options that were rejected.
Choosing a Density for an Analytics Dashboard
A generous, modern-looking redesign made a dashboard slower for the people who used it all day.
Case studyCraft convention
Where this usually shows up
The same material, organised around the surface you are building rather than the symptom you are fixing.