The Dangers of Choice

Choice is generally accepted as a good thing. We value our free will and autonomy, and being able to make decisions and influence the course of our lives is important to us. Choice isn't always positive however. Choices can be misleading, they can distract from worthwhile options, and they can be a shield or be a distraction from what matters. Sometimes it is better to omit choice, and provide a good approach or value as the default. This needs to be balanced against providing flexibility, utility, and personalisation.

In this list below, which is by no means exhaustive, I have outlined some of the problems with choices and some strategies relating to using choice in design. These issues and approaches should apply across many contexts where choice is an issue, from user interfaces, to business design, and even how we build the basic institutions of our society.

Choices can be intimidating

Choices can be intimidating. A user interface that has too many options can deter people from using the product or service, especially if they need or want something quick and straight forward. You should not want to scare away your users or customers. A search interface that explicitly provides every possible option is overwhelming. It will take time for users to grapple with the interface and figure out what needs to be done.

Provide guidance and a safe environment. Signal and signpost the option that will be the most suitable for the majority of cases. Keep things simple and easy to understand; more advanced options can be provided, but tuck them away.

In one sense this is a curse of a graphical interface. The command line is unlikely to overwhelm users with options, but it can be just as intimidating in its blinking mystery and lack of guidance. A good example of an interface with progressive choice would be a search engine that allows modifiers and additional commands to be entered into the search box. These options are available to users, and the fact of their existence could be signposted, but they are not visually apparent on the initial screen so do not overwhelm a user. Yet advanced users can make use of them immediately.

Choices can give too much choice

Choices, like design, need constraints. Constraints provide context and direction, as well as narrowing the field of potential options. Too much choice can be daunting, and it may be impractical or too difficult to meaningfully compare or understand them all.

You should design with focus. Provide meaningful choices that support the user. Provide 'one step wizards' that will handle a task for a user, and also provide small steps and functions that are easy to understand and can be chained together to perform larger actions and tasks. The available choices can be designed and presented such that they impart meaning to the application or service, and help the user understand what is available to them.

Choices can be unhelpful

You are in charge of a nuclear power station. There is an emergency, and the reactor needs to be shut down. As a user you are only interested in safely shutting down the reactor. You want clear, identifiable and easily understood routes to shutting down the reactor. You do not want to be presented with superfluous options, nor do you want the option of omitting things such as raising an alarm.

Likewise rather than being presented with the choice of a range of differently performing schools, it is far better for the users of the service that the standards of schools are raised. In this example choice is masking the failure to provide an adequate level of service.

Within the concept of freedom there is a distinction between formal freedoms and real freedoms. Although formally a freedom may be accorded to you (you are free to do X), in practice you may be subject to constraints that limit or remove your ability to freely make a choice. Give people real choices, don't give the impression of choice where in practice there is no choice.

Choices should be meaningful, relevant, and supportive. Don't provide the choice to do things badly, or to offer a poorer level of service, or if you do provide the best choice by default; require the users to actively choose a poorer (e.g. less safe or less desirable state).

Choices can be presented poorly

The more differences there are between choices the harder they are to evaluate. In the market place there is a proliferation of choice (or at least the proliferation of the perception of choice). On the one hand this provides a greater diversity of products and services, but it also adds unnecessary choices and makes selection more difficult. As choice proliferates the effort and knowledge required to make an effective choice expands, ultimately harming the end user.

Support users in making choices. Provide meaningful comparisons. Indicate the costs and consequences of choices. Keep the field of choice small but useful.

Choice can be bad for your health

Choices are not always good. Who wants to choose between good healthcare or poor healthcare? A fulfilling life or a miserable life? Choice is generally considered to be a positive thing, but you should be cautious and carefully consider whether the choices being offered are beneficial to the other party.

A useful example comes via Brian Barry's Why Social Justice Matters. Imagine a system for health care, much like the American one, where your employer supplies health insurance as part of your reward package. Ideally for those who are the beneficiaries, this should provide for all of their health care needs. If this isn't possible then it should provide for the most likely and the most pressing health care needs. The example that Barry gives is that some companies start to provide a choice of health insurance packages. On the face of it, this seems positive because choice is considered to be good and empowering. In practice it becomes difficult for individuals to pick between the choices, and requires an investment of time and effort to fully understand all of the options and their ramifications. Additional issues include that: not everyone will be as well equipped to make the choice and so the less educated and those with less time will make poorer decisions; human beings are notoriously bad at assessing risk and so this is something better worked out objectively by experts; the choices may not be as good as the original comprehensive option and worse still employees may be asked to sacrifice more to select certain choices, and; rather than have a small number of people examining the available options the result is that now everyone has to carry out the effort. Pushing choice out to individuals, rather than having experts make choices, multiplies the overall work and effort required to make the choice. Once such a system is in place it has further ramifications: the stratified choices will create an administrative burden that has to be met by someone; it breaks people into groups which allows for treating them differently, and; it shifts responsibility, or the perception of responsibility, onto the employee. Where before there may have been a single fit-for-purpose system, there is now a series of options that are difficult to choose from, are not as comprehensive, cost more to make use of, take more individual and overall effort to asses, and if something goes wrong the perception is that the employee chose the wrong package rather than that the employer failed to provide adequate cover.

When considering and implementing choice we should always consider who benefits, and if we would be better off without a choice. Choosing between a poor transcoding algorithm and a good one is not a worthwhile choice, and nor is choosing between a poor reward package and a good one.

Provide a good level of basic service. Choice should be made available to personalise or adapt a system, not to diminish the experience of users. Clearly signpost risky or irreversible changes. Provide safety nets and recovery routes  (e.g. undo and/or a recycle bin).

On Engineering Organisations and Teams

Via Brian Barry's Why Social Justice Matters:

"Any dictatorship takes a psychological toll on its subjects. If you are treated as an untrustworthy person — a potential slacker, drug addict, or thief — you may begin to feel less trustworthy yourself. If you are constantly reminded of your lowly position in the social hierarchy, whether by individual managers or be a plethora of impersonal rules, you being to accept that unfortunate status." - Barbara Ehrenreich (2001) Nickel and Dimed: On (not) Getting By in America

and:

"The re-engineering of corporations may sound progressive, especially to shareholders, but the apparent price workers pay is an undercurrent of anxiety and diminished loyalty and commitment, their morale eroded by a chaotic and dysfunctional work environment in which individuals are discounted or devalued altogether... A recent study showed that workers who kept their jobs during a major downsizing were twice as likely to die from cardiovascular disease, perhaps triggered by work stress" - Cited in Stefan Fern, Let's Give Change a Rest, Guardian 21 May 2004.

If the latter is true, then providing suitable fit-for-purpose working environments that treats people as autonomous agents worthy of respect may be just as effective as some health programmes and interventions.

Book recommendations from 2011

Last year's highlights in books:

• On the Philosophy front is Brian Barry's Culture and Equality. Well written, clear, and compelling.
• On the Human-Computer Interaction front is Universal Principles for Design by Lidwell, Holden, and Butler. I've not managed to give this book the attention it deserves yet as it is sitting on my desk at work, and I've been working elsewhere for a couple of months. Good examples, a clear layout, and overall good design principles for interaction design.
• On the Fiction front my highlight was the Malazan Book of the Fallen, which starts with Gardens of the Moon and culminates in The Crippled God. Sitting on my desk screaming out to be read is Orb Sceptre Throne by Esslemont, who is writing within the Malazan setting.
• Honourable mention must be given to Christopher Hitchen's final work Arguably.

Barry on the inhumane slaughter of animals to meet religious requirements

In the news this week: moves in the Dutch parliament to ban the slaughter of unstunned animals (BBC discussion article).

A brief synopsis of the issue:

1. Slaughtering animals without stunning / rendering them unconscious beforehand is increasingly considered to be inhumane, and there is a growing move in many countries to ban the practice.
2. This is in conflict with Jewish and Muslim religious doctrine. Their counter arguments are roughly a) such laws inhibit their religious freedom, and b) their way is just as / more humane than the other proposed methods.

And a side issue that often goes unremarked: in the West there is a growing distaste of 'ritual slaughter' and a growing desire to use methods that are considered more humane. Where ritual slaughter is allowed it can be considered to be allowed on an exception basis, i.e. "we don't like this, but we realise that slaughtering animals in this way is important to some segments of our population". A problem however is that because according to at least one religious doctrine not all of the animal is fit for consumption, so the rest of it finds its way into the 'mainstream food supply chain' in order (allegedly) to make the practice economically viable. This means that people who are against the practice of religious slaughter are financially supporting said practices. There have been moves at the EU level for meat not slaughtered to a standard considered humane by the mainstream to be labelled as such so that it can be identified by the discerning shopper. Apparently such moves have been resisted on the grounds that it would inhibit religious freedom. It is not clear why this should weigh more than the freedom of others to choose not to support practices that they consider inhumane.

Anyway, on with Brian Barry and what he had to say on the matter (p45):

"...we must insist on the crucial difference between a denial of equal opportunities to some group [..] and a choice some people make out of that from a set of equal opportunities [..] as a result of certain beliefs. [...] We all constantly impose restrictions on ourselves in choosing among the options that are legally available to us according to our beliefs about what is right, polite, decent, prudent, professionally appropriate, and so on."

and (p45),

"Assuming that killing animals without prior stunning falls below the prevailing standards for the humane treatment of animals, the point is that those who are not prepared to eat meat from animals killed in any other way cannot eat meat without violating these minimum standards. It is not the law but the facts (assuming the facts bear it out) of neurophysiology that make this so. The law may condone the additional suffering of animals killed without prior stunning, but if it does we should be clear that what it is doing is accommodating the tastes of a subset of carnivores, not observing the demands of religious freedom."

(p35)

"Consider, for example, the way in which people's beliefs may make some job opportunities unattractive to them. Pacifists will presumably regard a career in the military as closed to them. Committed vegetarians are likely to feel the same about jobs in slaughterhouses or butcher's shops. Similarly, if legislation requires that animals should be stunned before being killed, those who cannot as a result of their religious beliefs eat such meat will have to give up eating meat altogether."

From Barry (2001). Culture and Equality. Polity Press.

On equal respect to cultures and ways of life

On liberals (allegedly) having to give equal respect to cultures because liberals are committed to equal respect for persons:

"The obvious problem with this argument is that illiberal cultures typically—I am tempted to say necessarily—are committed to violating the cannons of equal respect. Equal respect for people cannot therefore entail respect for their cultures when these cultures systematically give priority to, say, the interests of men over the interests of women."

- Brian Barry (2001). Culture & Equality. Polity Press. p127 

August's Reading

Fiction
I've recently finished Dance with Dragons, the latest instalment of A Song of Ice and Fire by George Martin. Quick summary: great book, long time coming.

Fantasy Flight Games' Deathwatch role playing book.

HCI
A bit lacklustre here, I am currently re-reading Apple's Human Interface Guidelines (HIG) for mobile devices.

Philosophy
I've just started on David McFarland's Guilty Robots, Happy Dogs: The Question of Alien Minds. I'm also part way through Brian Barry's Equality and Culture, which is a great book and essential reading for anyone interested in multiculturalism. Barry is an entertaining read, with compelling arguments, clarity of writing, and less restraint than most to sticking in the intellectual boot when he disagrees with someone.