Too Much Choice

  • Comments posted to this topic are about the item Too Much Choice

  • I agree with the distraction. Give most people too much to think about and I think they suffer from a personal analysis paralysis. I know I do.

    Oh, and for those of us in Britain, a valid link for the one in the Editorial is here. Funny that the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) stopped me, a British citizen accessing the Internet within Britain, from accessing their content which I paid for via my licence fee :rolleyes:

    Gaz

    -- Stop your grinnin' and drop your linen...they're everywhere!!!

  • The last time I went to http://www.iegallery.com and clicked on search providers/all there were 855 choices.

    And all I wanted was a simple 'pasta con ragu'. In Italy that's spaghetti with tomato sauce.

    😛

  • Right on the mark. Just go to a grocery these days. Hundreds of thousands of items, no longer in and out with a loaf of wheat bread and gallon of white whole milk.

    Of course, when applied to data, this requires intelligent decisions and built in flexibility in the event the decisions are not optimal and need to be adjusted.

    Once again, wisdom trumps knowledge. Some got it, some don't.

    Rick
    Disaster Recovery = Backup ( Backup ( Your Backup ) )

  • As drivers get more choices, options, and opportunities to interact with information, they may not be driving as well as they otherwise might.

    I find it amazing that people can't stop using their technology while driving. Someone texting on their phone is just as dangerous as a drunk driver. What is it about technology that people need constant interaction with it?

    As far as available choices... everyone has their limit as to when it becomes a problem. Personally, if a restaurant has five choices, I would likely complain that there isn't enough choice. But, if it has 20 choices, I may consider that too many and have a problem choosing.

    Tom

  • OCTom (1/23/2014)


    As drivers get more choices, options, and opportunities to interact with information, they may not be driving as well as they otherwise might.

    I find it amazing that people can't stop using their technology while driving. Someone texting on their phone is just as dangerous as a drunk driver. What is it about technology that people need constant interaction with it?

    As far as available choices... everyone has their limit as to when it becomes a problem. Personally, if a restaurant has five choices, I would likely complain that there isn't enough choice. But, if it has 20 choices, I may consider that too many and have a problem choosing.

    Tom

    As for restaurants, we have already made a selection when we choose the restaurant whether it be a culinary style (French, TexMex, Tapas etc.) or an eating style (fast food, sit down, take away etc.) so we have already made two choices at least even before seeing the menu.

    Gaz

    -- Stop your grinnin' and drop your linen...they're everywhere!!!

  • I think that's called obsessive/compulsive. Remember the old commercial line, 'Just pick one'?

    Rick
    Disaster Recovery = Backup ( Backup ( Your Backup ) )

  • I saw an article on the Detroit Auto Show (I think) some time ago. If memory serves, it was an article on ExtremeTech. Built into the dash of a concept car - I kid you not - was a touchscreen console that allowed the passenger to do Facebook and other social media, watch movies and TV, surf the Internet and pretty much anything you could do from a smart phone or tablet.

    THEORETICALLY it would be angled in the production version so the driver couldn't see it, but I still have visions of idiots trying to drive from the passenger side and use the bloody thing.

    Talk about a really BAD idea...

    ____________
    Just my $0.02 from over here in the cheap seats of the peanut gallery - please adjust for inflation and/or your local currency.

  • Excellent article and supporting articles as well. The concept is simple, and the advice wonderful. We have problems with focus as well as options. The more there are the more likely we are to get side tracked or confused. Thank you!

    M...

    Not all gray hairs are Dinosaurs!

  • Paradox of Choice

    Mattie

  • This reminds me of the Chinese food menu with 200+ numbered items. If you look at just the headings you can see all items are repeated for beef, pork, chicken, and shrimp. There are also about four sauces and maybe four vegetable combinations. The menu could be shortened dramatically by picking one from each group of meat, sauce, and veggie combo.

    Russians immigrating here in the U.S. had a terrible time adjusting to our varieties of products. There were high rates of suicide because our culture was so different.

    I still can only get two out of three things I want in any product such as yogurt not non-fat, yes Greek style, yes fruit. It seems the plethora of products still seem to copy other brands. Can I get Coke-lite, maybe 50 calories instead of choosing between zero and 150? Remember the saying when looking for a girlfriend: beauty, kindness, sanity - pick 2.

  • Bill Talada (1/23/2014)


    This reminds me of the Chinese food menu with 200+ numbered items. If you look at just the headings you can see all items are repeated for beef, pork, chicken, and shrimp. There are also about four sauces and maybe four vegetable combinations. The menu could be shortened dramatically by picking one from each group of meat, sauce, and veggie combo.

    This sounds horribly like a Cartesian product. 🙂

  • Gary Varga (1/23/2014)


    OCTom (1/23/2014)


    ...

    As far as available choices... everyone has their limit as to when it becomes a problem. Personally, if a restaurant has five choices, I would likely complain that there isn't enough choice. But, if it has 20 choices, I may consider that too many and have a problem choosing.

    Tom

    As for restaurants, we have already made a selection when we choose the restaurant whether it be a culinary style (French, TexMex, Tapas etc.) or an eating style (fast food, sit down, take away etc.) so we have already made two choices at least even before seeing the menu.

    Some years back, my wife and I were holidaying "off-peak" in Bali - in a village that had more restaurants than tourists at that time of year. Each evening we would walk past the restaurants, read the menus, and chat with the other tourists doing the same thing. Some days we had already decided where we wanted to try that evening, other days just really hungry and headed into the first place that sounded (and looked) acceptable, but quite often we were the first customers into the place. Didn't take too long to notice that within a short space of time, the restaurant we had selected would have quite a number of other customers, while most of the others we could see nearby had none. After a fortnight of observations, we dubbed it "the Zerk Effect."

    We still notice this happening, to a lesser extent, when we hit the local "chinatown" restaurants today.

    The Zerk Effect - "When confronted with too many choices, most people will look around and see what everyone else is doing."

    ;-)You heard it here first.

  • Just demonstrates how gullible and unthinking the general public is now. Generation of followers. More items on the menu, must be a better place to eat, right?

    Rick
    Disaster Recovery = Backup ( Backup ( Your Backup ) )

  • I can't find the original article off-hand. But years ago there was an article on parenting that said the best way to get kids off to school on time was when they went to the morning bath pick out two sets of clothes for the kid to wear. Lay them on the bed and then go do your stuff. The kids will generally be dressed and ready to go for school/breakfast/whatever when you came back. But when you left the closet open for them to pick from the bunch you would have issues.

    Same with breakfast -- eggs and bacon or waffles. Not what do you want?

    As I understand it, marketing companies recommend the same thing to retailers as well. Walk into a Lowe's or Home Depot. They'll have palettes of oak, pine, hickory Pergo flooring on hand. They'll also have the sandalwood samples on display, but they are an "order" item. The number of people that accept the "delay" is probably minimal even though they are having the store deliver it on day four instead of day three.

    Part of it is instant gratification, and part of it is validation of your choice, and some of it is following the herd.

    I do my best to look at a combination of factors and take the time to look at both the short and long term. Especially when it is part of the core infrastructure.



    ----------------
    Jim P.

    A little bit of this and a little byte of that can cause bloatware.

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