Revisiting our conversation from last night on the factor that limits and criteria can play in our creative decisions (haiku and such), today I found an article written for the software industry that deals with choice overload:

They created two displays of gourmet jams. One display had 24 jars. The other had 6. Each display invited people to try the jams and offered them a discount coupon to buy the jam. They alternated these displays in a grocery store and tracked how many people passed the displays, how many people stopped and sampled the jams, and how many subsequently used the offered coupon to buy the jam.

The results were surprising.

• 24 jar display: 60% of the people passing the display sampled the jam, 3% purchased jam.
• 6 jar display: 40% of the people passing the display sampled the jam, 30% purchased jam.

The larger display was better at getting people’s attention. But the number of choices overwhelmed them and they just walked away with out deciding to purchase a jam. In other words, if the goal is to attract consumers, less is more. Too much choice is demotivating. Admittedly, selecting a gourmet jam is insignificant. Maybe for more important issues, “choice overload” is not relevant? The authors of this paper, however, went on to consider more important choices such as 401K plans, and once again, a clear choice overload effect was found. Choice overload is real. When people are faced with too many choices, the natural tendency is to “not make a choice” and just walk away (probably in frustration). (emphasis added)

The article goes on to discuss how this study applies to the programming community. But we don’t care about the programming community. The upshot for us is that it’s OK to limit your focus when starting a project. In fact, one might deduce that we have to narrow our focus when starting a project, otherwise the project might not even begin. And how do we do this limiting? Research.

Original article (via)