I’ve recently become interested in a field of study called User Experience; it’s kind of a mashup of psychology and design, which is right up my alley and highly applicable to and important in the realm of web development, which (as you may know) is my profession. I don’t know why i’ve never really learned anything about User Experience (or UX, as it’s called), but i think reading about it might give me renewed passion for what i do. So, i’ve started a to-read list of some UX books, and i began my research with The Paradox of Choice: Why More Is Less by Barry Schwartz, which turned out to be more applicable to my everyday life than to my career.
I expected this book to be primarily about consumer culture and how the overwhelming array of choices in any given retail environment actually scares off customers. I thought it was a book about UX, but it actually only touched on the consumer aspects of overwhelming choice. It focused more on people and how too many choices tend to make many of us miserable; it turned out to be more like what i wanted Blink and How We Decide to be. It explained how there are two types of people when it comes to making decisions: maximizers, who agonize over choosing the best thing and often keep looking once they’ve made a decision, and satisficers, who start a search with a set of criteria and stop searching once they’ve found something that meets those criteria. I’m definitely a maximizer. And as it turns out, maximizers are more prone to depression, regret, and dissatisfaction with their decisions.
Schwartz’s central argument in the book is that the increased number of choices that modern people face for just about every aspect of life actually leads us to be less satisfied in life—even though we have it better in almost every objective way than any previous generation of humans ever has—because most of us tend to be maximizers. I saw so much of myself in this book; this is why planning the wedding was so difficult for me, this is why i constantly compare my physical appearance to others, this is why i still don’t know what i want to be when i grow up. The world is too wide-open; i have too much freedom, i’ve been encouraged to want perfection and i blame myself when i don’t think i’ve achieved it. If i were a satisficer, life would be so much more—well, satisfying. Which is not to say that i don’t feel extremely privileged and grateful for the wonderful life that i do have. I just don’t focus on that gratitude as much as i should.
I thought this was a really insightful, useful book. My only criticism is that it almost felt more like a self-help than a science book. I think it could’ve been backed up by more research. I do think i was in need of the help it offered, though. I need to go shopping for boots soon, and when i do i now know to get my expectations sorted out beforehand, not set them too high, and only look at a couple of different shops. Wish me luck.
Tuesday, November 29th, 2011 4:27 pm • books
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November 29th, 2011 at 5:38 pm
this sounds very interesting … and I have to agree with his theory. I put this on my virtual bookshelf to look at later.
November 30th, 2011 at 11:45 am
Man, that’s a lot of pop-psych books in a row for you now isn’t it? I’m interested to hear more about your opinion on this one next time I see you. I read it when it first came out hoping that it would give an analytical approach to the dilemma of choice but instead found it more like a Dr. Phil or Oprah book on life, widdling things down into only a few types and making drastically overstated generalizations. The ideas for sure are solid and I agree with many of them but I just felt wanting for substance afterwards. Does that make sense?
November 30th, 2011 at 12:28 pm
I read this book a few months ago for my podcast: http://www.pagebreakpodcast.com/podcast/13-paradox-of-choice/
Definitely agreed with the central argument of the book as well, keeping that in mind as I design (less is more!)
November 30th, 2011 at 4:10 pm
@Mike, yeah, i totally get what you mean. I thought the book was a little too dumbed-down; it would’ve been interesting to see this idea more fleshed-out and thoroughly researched.
@Niki thanks for the link! I liked your podcast; you two got a lot more out of this in terms of how it relates to the practice of design than i did. Glad i got to hear your perspective.