Choice can be confusing
The received wisdom is that the more choices that we have about something, the better. However, humans often get confused if they have to choose between many possibilities. I see this all the time in Windows. Windows seems to always have multiple ways to do the same thing. In fact, I used to tell classes that there are always six or more ways to do anything in Windows. (I may have exaggerated but not much.) Invariably, however, students were not impressed with having to learn six different ways to do the same thing. One was enough and that was all they wanted to know. I was reminded of this when I came across this blog post complaining about the “Off” function in Vista. As a general comment, the author writes:
The more choices you give people, the harder it is for them to choose, and the unhappier they’ll feel. See, for example, Barry Schwartz’s book, The Paradox of Choice. Let me quote from the Publishers Weekly review: “Schwartz, drawing extensively on his own work in the social sciences, shows that a bewildering array of choices floods our exhausted brains, ultimately restricting instead of freeing us. We normally assume in America that more options (’easy fit’ or ‘relaxed fit’?) will make us happier, but Schwartz shows the opposite is true, arguing that having all these choices actually goes so far as to erode our psychological well-being.
Sure, Windows is versatile and powerful and all that but it’s too complex for a lot of home PC users who really want an appliance. Instead, Microsoft just makes Windows more and more complicated. There’s a place for the all-powerful operating system but there are many millions of PC users who would be better off with a much simpler system and far fewer choices.
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