Imagine this scenario: It’s sunny and 94 degrees outside. You’ve stopped at a nearby shop to buy ice cream. When you enter, you see twenty flavors listed on a chalkboard behind the counter, half of which you’ve never seen before. While standing in line, you think about which flavor of ice cream you’d like: “I can always go for chocolate any day of the week, — but I’m intrigued by the vanilla lavender? And why on earth would someone make pizza* ice cream?!” Real experience; not that bad but definitely not good. You arrive at the front of the line still undecided, and feel caught off guard by the person behind the counter asking you what you’d like. It’s happened to almost everyone, and that scenario doesn’t even involve all that many options. What happens if the number of choices is large or even infinite? Short-lived or permanent? Say perhaps you’re trying to decide:

• which computer to buy
• what to watch on Netflix
• what to name a child, pet, or boat

Yes, I’ve been there before, but that’s just anecdotal evidence. Prove it. We’ve been told that more choices can lead to a more personal experience. If there are more choices, you’re more likely to get exactly what you want. However, more choices may also come with unintended consequences. Researchers Sheena Iyengar and Mark Lepper conducted three studies in 2000 to begin the exploration of potential links between choice and motivation. The first of their studies is often cited at the Jam Study. Presented with either 6 or 24 types of jam, passersby were roughly 20% more likely to stop at the booth with more options. However, of those that saw 24 types, only 3% actually bought jam, compared to 30% of those who only saw 6 options. Allowed to try as many jams as they pleased, it was interesting to note that none of the people that stopped at the booth tried more than two jams, regardless of condition. Thinking this might be a self-imposed limit by the visitors, to satisfice with the available options, the researchers sought to apply the same reasoning to a different domain, they immediately follow this up with another study. Here, they have assigned extra credit in a social psychology class. After watching “Twelve Angry Men,” every student has the opportunity to write a short paper (1–2 pages) on a topic relating to the class. Given 30 paper topics, 60% handed in the paper, compared to 74% of the group given 6 options. Even though the students were told the papers weren’t going to be graded, they were scored for form and content solely for this experiment. Two graduate students were tasked with grading the papers to minimize grading biases, intentionally uninformed of this experiment and the two conditions. They found a slight, yet statistically significant, difference in the overall performance, with those given less options doing slightly better. The initial hypothesis is still standing. More choice can lead to less action. However, their secondary hypothesis of the effects of choice on performance might need to be tested a few more times before it can really stick. As with everything, this may be more complex than it seemed at first. Looking to dig a little bit deeper into some of the selection methods people use to make these choices and test some hypotheses on people’s expectations of their choice, they moved these studies into an actual lab, where they could ask more targeted questions through surveys, etc. Their third experiment has research participants come into their lab to do an experiment in exchange for money. In this experiment, they asked people to select one of either 6 or 30 chocolates that they would typically buy for themselves, ensuring that all participants liked and could eat chocolate before signing up. Afterward, some were given the opportunity to taste the chocolate they selected. Others had a different chocolate selected for them at random, adding a no-choice condition to the mix. After tasting the chocolate, they filled out satisfaction and demographic questionnaires, and were told the test was over. Upon payment for their participation, the experimenter offered them either $5 or $5 worth of the chocolate they selected, to examine purchasing behavior. Here, it was noted that participants spent 3x longer deciding between 30 as opposed to 6 options, and rated the extensive-choice condition as more difficult/frustrating. Interestingly enough, they also rated the extensive-choice condition as more enjoyable. Ok, that’s fascinating and all, but why does this matter? How many choices should I give my customers/users/friends/significant other? While we may still be investigating the specifics of these links and some of these findings need replication before we should believe them, there is an evident link between choice and motivation that suggests that additional choices can change the decision-making process and underlying motivation. If you came here looking for a concrete number (say, 7 ± 2 — the suggested maximum when focused on working memory and attention), you’re going to be sorely disappointed. Nothing is ever as clear cut as we want it to be. Just as with everything else, it depends. If you’re trying to figure out how many choices to provide someone/a group of people, you should first prioritize your goals. Are you interested in helping people make quick choices? Enjoyable choices? Informed choices? A mixture of all of the above? Are you looking to increase brand awareness? Build credibility? Boost sales? All of the above? Because it is so difficult to determine when you’ve finally got too many choices, here are some good examples of mediating the choice paralysis paradigm: Getting a beer at a bar: I am a fanatic for local craft beer. Anytime I travel to a new location, I immediately search for that place’s local breweries and explore new beers I can’t get at home. Just like me, people go to craft beer bars looking for a good experience. For the person in charge of curating the selection, that can lead to a very interesting puzzle. Since it’s impossible to have exactly the beer that everyone wants, it’s good to have at least one of each major style, and any local specialties. If they’ve got enough money and space, they can broaden their offerings, and can even offer as many as 100 different options. How to choose these options can be incredibly tough, because there are approximately 10,000 breweries in the world. Once your customers have come in looking for a beer, timeliness of the decision isn’t as important as the satisfaction the customer gets, so a wide range of options can be beneficial. It may even help to slow the rate people drink at, but that’s purely speculation at this point. In an effort to help customers make their choice, a well-organized menu can go a long way to ease this decision. A good menu is sorted by style, gives key information such as size, price, and perhaps a brief description if space allows. If I know I want a stout, I’m able to narrow the selection down from maybe 60 to 6, without even looking through the rest of them. With a more limited set of options that are even fairly similar, here’s where providing assistance such as a knowledgeable staff and tasting can help. In the Jam Study, participants were reluctant to try more than 2 jams even though the samples were free, so most of this information will come from your server/bartender. We exist to help people find the Finding a place to live: When searching for a place to live, the choices are seemingly infinite, but people usually enter with a vague set of requirements. However, some of the choices are incompatible. It would be extremely difficult to find an extremely large apartment in the downtown area of a city without paying loads of money. I’ve had great success with Padmapper in the past. In an older version, on initial load, it shows every apartment/house listed in the entire country, which is clearly too many options, but most of them aren’t helpful. They’ve since redesigned it to wait for location input before loading the map, likely to reduce initial load time, and lower unnecessary API calls for those who don’t actually click through into the site. Once you’ve selected a location, you’re provided an interactive map of the area; a text field for location; sliders for variable key information such as bedrooms, bathrooms, cost; and checkboxes for concrete key information such as dogs allowed, whether it’s for short term or long term, and similar. Sorting and filtering can customize the search results, but if the potential buyer’s criteria are incompatible and turn up zero results, they can remove the lowest priority requirements, or otherwise alter them to get a list of choices they can actually choose from. Designing a website for a client: During the discovery phase of designing a new website or mobile app, with so many people’s thoughts to consider, we often start with a much more limited set of choices than the above situations, and work on making faster decisions. To determine overall direction for the site/app design, we can work in a design studio format to generate a bunch of quick options from every person involved, and discuss their benefits and drawbacks internally. Each person takes a minute or two to draft their expectations for our final product, with the entire group coming up with 3–10 ideas each sketching session. We’ll talk it out to narrow those ideas down to a unified vision in a debriefing session before moving to the next stages. Every part of this process is time-boxed to avoid choice paralysis and force a decision within an allotted time. When presenting our work to clients, an inability to select from too many choices can stall the project and cause us to miss important deadlines. To ensure that clients feel they have some matter of choice, while also ensuring they make a decision quickly enough to stick to their timeline, we often provide two different design concepts to start the conversation and work toward their vision, which is usually somewhere in between the two. Your milage may vary. When you’re in the position of providing choices for others to consider, be sure to think about the choices you’re providing and what you’re hoping they get out of the experience of making that choice. Sometimes, it’s just best to make a decision, but sometimes the decision making process is a part of the experience. If you’re still overthinking how many choices you should give your audience, just go with your instinct and pay close attention to how that works. Adjust as needed.