I wanted to quickly illuminate what one might call the flip side of the Open To Choice campaign, which is summarized by this Publishers Weekly review of Barry Schwartz’s The Paradox of Choice (2004):
Like Thoreau and the band Devo, psychology professor Schwartz provides ample evidence that we are faced with far too many choices on a daily basis, providing an illusion of a multitude of options when few honestly different ones actually exist. The conclusions Schwartz draws will be familiar to anyone who has flipped through 900 eerily similar channels of cable television only to find that nothing good is on. Whether choosing a health-care plan, choosing a college class or even buying a pair of jeans, Schwartz, drawing extensively on his own work in the social sciences, shows that a bewildering array of choices floods our exhausted brains, ultimately restricting instead of freeing us. We normally assume in America that more options (“easy fit” or “relaxed fit”?) will make us happier, but Schwartz shows the opposite is true, arguing that having all these choices actually goes so far as to erode our psychological well-being.
I haven’t actually read this book, mind you, but this feeling of being “overwhelmed by choice” is an experience I’ve faced daily as a consumer in America. I’m not sure how prevalent it is in Europe, where the Windows 7 browser ballot is being presented to users.
My first thought when I’m confronted by choices that I don’t fully understand—cars, for instance, since I’m not a car person—is to find some kind of primer that tells me what the salient differences between the choices actually are. As some have noted, browsers actually look quite similar to each other, and many of the most important features are shared between them.
I haven’t actually been able to find such a primer online, though. I’m not even sure if many others would find such a thing useful. In any case, I just wanted to bring up this issue that some might face: Okay, I have choices when it comes to browsers, but they all look the same to me. Now what?
Is there something the Mozilla community can do to help them decide? Or is that not the place of the Open to Choice campaign?
My name is Atul Varma, and I'm the co-founder of a small Chicago company called 
Hi! If you are interested in the topic but don’t have the time to read the book, there’s a Google tech Talk by Schwartz which I think pretty much covers the point, and I highly recommend it to everybody
very interesting
The Paradox of Choice - Why More Is Less - 1:04:07
Google TechTalks April 27, 2006 Barry Schwartz
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=6127548813950043200#
So, I haven’t read that book either. But I suspect, based on limited evidence, that it is dumb.
Someone who had just read it made the point to me, as an example, that my then-ongoing stress about moving would be impossible if moving weren’t an option. I hope it goes without saying what a spectacularly dumb thought that is.
You might say my friend, not the book, is dumb. Maybe. I think that example is simply what you get when you take the book’s central idea and apply it to significant choices instead of trivia about crackers and blue jeans. I heard pundits say equally dumb stuff about health insurance on NPR, explicitly in response to this book.
How to deal with the trivia is a tougher question. I can’t unreservedly recommend my own strategy of ignoring as much as you can get away with. However there is a particular case where I can help. It is safe to skip the jelly aisle entirely and just order a jar or two of this stuff:
http://www.amazon.com/Frank-Coopers-Oxford-Marmalade-16oz/dp/B000P5H00S
Having gotten that rant off my chest, I think you have a great point about primers, and I have a few thoughts about that too.
There’s a class of people who really don’t want this choice. They know their lives are already too hectic, and they’re trying to simplify. These guys will click on the blue e and their lives will go on. And that’s OK.
I’m sure many Europeans would find an honest consumer guide to be super handy. I don’t think we’re the ones to provide it. When I buy a car, I always go to Consumer Reports and get the most reliable thing. But my trust in CR is based on their scrupulous independence–they don’t make cars and they don’t sell ads to anyone who does.
Thanks for the thought-provoking post.
I’ve read the book, it was a fantastic read.
This topic came up in a human behavior course I took in grad school. I remember one study which compared participants happiness with a decision. Those participants who were only presented 5 attributes (color, cost, etc.) to choose an object were much happier with their decision than people who were shown 10 or more attributes (these numbers may not be exact
So one possible solution is to focus on only 3-5 characteristics or features of Firefox to “market” to EU users, instead of a whole laundry list of reasons why it is the best.
Now the car example you give makes me think of another good solution–outsourcing decisions to your social graph. I don’t know anything about cars either but certain members of my extended family love cars and follow the new models coming out passionately. My boyfriend, for example, relied heavily on his brother’s advice when buying a car a few years ago.
Many of us working in tech are the go-to people in our families with questions about computers and browsers. What if from the ballot box a user could send an email to a friend or relative and ask what browser she should install? Or the person could see the name of the browser her children or friends are using?
Jason said: “So, I haven’t read that book either. But I suspect, based on limited evidence, that it is dumb.”
You should be reluctant to make judgments on limited evidence.
“Someone who had just read it made the point to me, as an example, that my then-ongoing stress about moving would be impossible if moving weren’t an option. I hope it goes without saying what a spectacularly dumb thought that is.”
I haven’t read the book but I have seen a TED talk by Barry Schwartz (http://www.ted.com/talks/barry_schwartz_on_the_paradox_of_choice.html) in which he clearly states that some choice is better than too much choice, which is better than no choice. So your friend chose a poor way of explaining the idea.
“I think that example is simply what you get when you take the book’s central idea and apply it to significant choices instead of trivia about crackers and blue jeans.”
In the TED talk he gave a concrete example of a company that offered various retirement funds that employees could invest in. For every 10 additional funds offered, 2% of employees would fail to make a choice. This was despite the fact that the employee was making dollar-per-dollar matching contributions. In other words, the extra choice was preventing people from taking what was effectively free money. So it’s not all crackers and blue jeans.
“the employee was making dollar-per-dollar matching contributions.”
Whoops, I meant “the employer”.
Let’s recognize where responsibility for choosing lies: with the employee. Extra choices may make a choice less likely, but ultimately the employee is the one responsible for choosing or not choosing, and saying it was due to extra choices is an abdication of responsibility.
The 2% statistic is insufficient to make a value judgment because it only paints half the story. We’re not told how much more value the employees who did consider the extra options derived as a result of that choice. What that anecdote suggests is that 2% of employees would benefit from UI which better recognized the optionality of choosing from additional funds: an investment “disclosure triangle”, if you will.