🚥 Hick's Law:
More choices increase decision-making time.
Dominos
Shake to shuffle
Airbnb
Reducing options
Netflix
Option overload
The more choices that are available to the user, the longer it will take them to reach a decision.
✅ Conversion rates
People will be more likely to convert, if you have fewer options.
i.e., if you have 10 different service tiers, you might find that potential customers are being paralyzed with choice (and so choose nothing).
✅ Input quality
If you're doing user research, and you give people too many choices, you may get worse data.
✅ Complexity & understanding
It's harder to understand the consequences of a decision, when there are more options available.
e.g., it'd be difficult to understand the nuances between iPads, if there were 50 versions on sale.
✅ Purchases
Minimise the number of choices
Simplify tasks (and make the decisions easier)
Use default options carefully to help remove decisions
The full Dominos menu is pretty large, and so to help you find new sides, they have this 'shake to shuffle' feature.
Essentially what this is doing, is serving you a few random sides, thereby reducing the number of visible options to select from.
When you start a search on Airbnb, they'll offer you a 'flexible search'.
This allows you to start looking, and get inspired, without having to decide on specific dates.
i.e., it's simplifying a decision.
Many people find the number of available titles on Netflix overwhelming, and end up just watching either nothing, or something they've already seen.
If there were only 5 movies on Netflix, you wouldn't find it nearly as hard to pick one.
