Design: Decision Architecture

• Why should fancy restaurants print their menus in a font that is elegant, but difficult to read?
• Why should scary rides in amusement parks have names that are difficult to pronounce?
• How do people assess the risk of food additives in everyday grocery items?

… And what does any of this have to do with UX design and usability?

Every day, your users make judgments and decisions about the products and services you provide based on the way you present them. In this column, I’ll talk about why seemingly insignificant aspects of information presentation can have surprising effects on people’s perceptions and behavior. Read More

In my last column, “Decision Architecture: Helping Users Make Better Decisions,” I talked about how people make decisions and what affects their decision-making process. Although it’s a common assumption that people are largely goal oriented and know what they want, research on decision making has shown that our preferences are actually quite malleable—especially when we encounter something new.

What affects decision outcomes most is the actual context in which people make decisions. All kinds of things affect decision making—the type of decision someone is making, the decision maker’s level of expertise, the number of options available, the way and order in which options are presented, and many others. This column examines how the number of available options affects the decision-making process. Read More

Right now, your Web site is affecting users’ decisions.

• What influences your users’ decisions?
• What decision-making strategies do they use?
• How does your design affect decision outcomes?

Many UX professionals are passionate about creating great Web sites. But what is it that makes a Web site great? In answering this question, it’s sometimes valuable to take a step back and consider anew why we create Web sites. What is it that we’re trying to achieve?

For the most part, we create Web sites to get users to do something—for example, to make a purchase, donate to a cause, or sign up for our service. It is our expectation that users will make decisions about how to proceed. But are we designing for optimal decision making by users?

In my column, Decision Architecture, I’ll discuss how people make decisions and how we can design Web sites to make decision making easier for them and get the decision outcomes we need. Read More