Comparison and selection – How to help users make decisions through design

Say time is really not how to squeeze how some, in addition to work and turn books, every day to come here Code code word has already put the last point of available resources to occupy clean. However, there is a little more clear that they can put most of the time and energy on these things, in fact, can explain the status of the current day is improving, people worried about the exhausting things gradually become less. OK, Pisces Man's nagging is over, let's take a look at this translation. Theme keywords: comparison, selection, decision-making, design guidance.

Imagine a potential user browsing your site, comparing the products and services you offer, and wondering if you want to make a purchase. Perhaps you can confidently say that the current "buy" feature is very eye-catching and easy to use for users, but can you guarantee that the experience of "comparison" and "selection" is equally reliable?

Today, many user experience designers are already familiar with the design of user-oriented behavior. But in many cases, the design is based on the assumption that the user is bound to perform the operation. Know that all actions are followed by a "decision"; for example, to produce a buying behavior, the user first needs to make a decision on the choice of the target product.

Research has pointed out that the decision-making process is very flexible, and the factors that can be used for reference are not as clear and stable as we have always thought; the context of the process has a great impact on the outcome of the decision itself. From the point of view of website product design, the results of this study are very important, it is equivalent to tell us, as a user decision-making context, the design of the site itself will not only be used for "usability" and other general user experience elements, but also affect the user's choice of behavior and decision-making.

The goal of

decision making

How should the design for decision making process be carried out? First, we need to know what the goal of this process is--simply put, the lowest resource consumption in exchange for the most reasonable and valuable decision outcome. Perhaps you will notice that there is a sense of contradiction or compromise in this statement, because usually good decisions are made without effort.

It is important to recognize the goals of decision making and the inherent internal contradictions, because in essence, our design can resolve this contradiction, effectively help users make the most appropriate decision, or it will aggravate its existence, affect the user's choice and judgment; when people can't make decisions, they don't make decisions. For the site, even if the follow-up process experience is excellent, it is meaningless.

User Experience design for decision-making

Many aspects of the design will have an impact on the user's decision making process, including the visual layout, the number of options, the type of information and the way it is worded, and so on. The role of these factors in decision making is subtle, but also powerful.

The most effective way to design the user experience in the process of decision making is to promote the natural behavior of the users and to excavate the strategies that people used in making decisions.

evaluates value by comparison

One of the key questions we need to understand first is how the user determines and evaluates the value of a product.

People are not born with the ability to judge the absolute value of things, they need a process of comparison. People have been comparing things: products, services, ideas, others, and so on; This is a natural act of the people, as well as the behaviors that designers need to promote and inspire in the right way.

To demonstrate the important role of "comparison" in making decisions, let's look at an interesting study (in PDF format). Among them, the researchers divided a group of people into three groups, and asked each of them to evaluate the price of the dictionary.

One group of people was shown a dictionary with 20,000 words, but its cover was broken and the other group saw a new dictionary with 10,000 entries. At the end of the average, people are willing to pay $20 for a dictionary with a broken cover but more content, but are willing to pay 24 dollars for the new but less-content dictionary.

The researchers then handed over two dictionaries to the third group for careful observation and comparison. As a result, they are more likely to pay higher prices for more dictionaries of that content, regardless of whether their cover is damaged or not, with a specific offer of 27 dollars and 19 dollars. This is the opposite of the test results that were directly valued without comparison.

The study looks simple, but there are a number of important aspects to the user experience and related web design areas. First, we can see that a separate review of a dictionary, or a comparison of two of them, can have the most direct impact on the outcome of a value assessment. This is what we mentioned earlier, people are not born with the ability to judge the absolute value of things; The process of comparison determines the outcome of people's judgment of value.

To correctly judge the value of a dictionary, people need some measure of standard. How many entries should be included in an excellent dictionary? The vast majority of people do not understand. So in doing value evaluation, because can not see the pros and cons of comparison, people can only refer to their own inner subjective standards. For example, people in the first group did not know that the contents of the dictionaries they had received were more than they could understand, but the cover of the dictionary was damaged, so they were naturally more likely to make negative judgments.

When people have the opportunity to make a direct comparison between the two dictionaries, they can make judgments about the areas they care about, such as the number of entries included; It is only when they are unable to assess what is really important that the more visible secondary factors directly determine the outcome of the final judgment. This is what we call the context of the decision-making process affecting the outcome itself.

So, if we can make a reasonable design for the "comparison" link, we can help users focus on the attributes that are really important to the object, and then make the right value judgments. In the dictionary example, another factor that affects people's judgment is "information." Imagine if people were to evaluate the price of a dictionary and tell them the number of entries a typical good dictionary would need, and whether the final valuation would change.

for "comparative" Environmental Space Design

As mentioned above, the process of "comparison" can help people to evaluate the value of target object more rationally and comprehensively, and it is the challenge for us to plan and design the context space of the process properly. Excellent design scheme can comprehensively and effectively show the important attributes of target object, help people to understand the key information and make reasonable decision.

Perhaps the best way to better understand how to design a more effective user experience For comparison is to compare. Let's take a look at some examples of positive and negative two.

Example 1: Setting the context Environment

Which of the two scenarios in the following diagram has a more contrasting effect? Obviously the first one. Here, it is the "original price" that sets the context for comparison behavior, giving people the Regular to determine whether the current price is cost-effective. Although the current price in the second design is 2 dollars lower than the first one, the contrast effect makes the first option more appealing.

Example 2: Highlighting key information for comparison

The following illustration shows a negative example. This design scheme hopes to reflect the difference of three service by the change of color matching, but it is not effective to highlight important information. They assume that users will carefully read the details of each service and then compare them, but in reality, users would prefer to have a full comparison of each service in the shortest amount of time and see where the differences are. The scheme clearly failed to show the critical information used for "comparisons" in an easily identifiable way.

Example 3: Provide reference

The example below illustrates the natural need for comparison. Most people will be concerned about whether they have enough deposits; In such a demand, it is not enough to use just one number to present the user's deposit information, who knows if the 50,000-dollar pension is high or low. The product planners and designers of this example site know that people need a reference at this point to compare-they add a "similar person" to the user's personal account as a guideline, shows the average level of the user's industry, with a column chart that clearly shows the effect of contrast, Enable users to be able to glance.

Example 4: Contrast

We can see in the example below, the display of the user scoring in the form of a column chart has a strong visual contrast effect; Such a method can effectively deepen the impression of information in the user's mind and promote the decision making.

Example 5: Enhancing the scalability of visual representations

This is also a negative example. The design of the page shown in the following illustration is intended to allow the user to compare the performance parameters of the PC to the Mac, and ultimately find that the price difference is so great when the performance is almost identical. However, the centered content alignment makes this effect a discount, and users must read the content in a way that is not suitable for sight scanning. In addition, the size of the content map appears too large.

Example 6: Highlighting features

The data table in the following example is an effective form of content that is easy to scan, and it is clear to users in a very short time that the TD Bank behaves better in every way (at least in their own choice of services). Let's take a quick look at how visual design effectively supports the presentation of page information. First of all, in the title bar, TD is the only logo with the name of the bank, and put on the leftmost, whether from the style or the order of the point of view, can ensure that users see the first TD this column. In addition, unlike other columns, the background color is used in the column that the TD is in. Of course, in order to highlight their own service advantages, for all of these project metrics, TD is a green icon in the column, and even if the competitor will provide the same service, but also use the gray hook as a weakening process.

Summary

Let's review the main points of the previous article. In the design of user experience for decision making, one of the most effective ideas is to promote the natural behavior of the users and to excavate the strategies that people used in making decisions. Always pay attention to two aspects:

The goal of

decision making, and its inherent contradictory factors. People are not born with the ability to judge the absolute value of things; The process of comparison determines the result of the judgment of value.

To help and guide the user to choose and judge, the key is whether we can plan and design the context environment of the decision-making process. The following principles are available for our reference:

provides references that make it easier for people to judge the value of a target object by comparison. Make critical information more visible and easy for users to focus on the most useful information in the shortest amount of time. Through reasonable page layout and visual style, make the content easier to scan the eyes. Provide the right information in the right place, removing information and page elements that are not only unable to help the user to compare, but may even hinder the decision making process.

In this process there is no so-called neutral design, any details of the design will be in the user decision making. This is similar to usability design, regardless of whether the designer intentionally, each place in the program will be positive or negative impact on the availability of products.

Historically speaking, the topic of "decision making" has not received much attention in the field of user experience design, which needs to be changed a little bit. We should gradually understand that the user decision making process has played an important role in the expectation of the website product.

Original site to compile the article. If you want to reprint, please specify: This article from the is for Web English original: Http://uxmag.com/articles/decision-architecture-de ... Translator Information: C7210-web design and front-end players, is now working in the Mass Comment Network product Department user Experience Design Group (UED)