Paradox of Choice (used appropriately?)
By Eddie Lopez. Sunday, 12. August 2007, 23:06:32
The most recent Minnesota UPA chapter presentation on usability considerations for GPS rekindled my interest GPS products.
Inspired by suggestions & reviews recommending the Garmin nüvi devices, I checked the company website to see what they had to offer.
Of the 31 devices on the page, 24 all look pretty much the same, with no other useful information other than the product name. There's very little useful information from just the picture. I can tell for example, that the 600 series appears to be widescreen, but the 250W is also wide, how would I know to get a 200 series over a 300 series?
This became an arduous process of selecting items to compare... arduous since I can only view 5 at a time, so my first comparison was 200 vs. 300 vs. 600. vs. StreetPilot just to find out what is the difference* of the product lines are.
I was overwhelmed with my choices. I liked that I was able to really dig into the specs down to the level of making my purchase based on if I planned to use my phone to connect to it via bluetooth, but frustrated and confused that there was too much going on. This is the Paradox of Choice... I left Garmin's site and relied on other sources to choose and purchase my product (newegg.com btw).
But then I realized that this is by design; there is a caveat to throw in. The goal of the page linked to would be to get as much information out there about the products as possible. In the Paradox of Choice, there's a story about jelly varieties... when people were allowed to sample items (oddly enough, I believe it's 24 kinds, the same number of relatively similar looking GPS units on the page), they sample quite a few varieties, but purchased a small percentage. When given a choice of only six jellies, they purchased more often. So the idea is that you offer tons of choice if you want to "get the word out" about your product. But you should limit choice when you want users to take action, or make a purchase. Since that's not necessarily the goal of the Garmin site, it makes sense to consider this approach.
Still, there's design considerations that would have rounded out this user experience saving me time, confusion, and frustration. Break the automotive section up, group the series of GPS devices with a couple of marketing words about what target audience each 200,300,600 series device is meant for and provide at least one or two bullets for each product that sets it apart from the rest of the series "Bluetooth connectivity" or "MSN traffic info."
For what it's worth, I settled on a model a few years old now, but it still does everything I'd want to do at a considerable savings... the nüvi 350. I've been wanting to study the UIs of GPS devices for some time now, hopefully some stories will follow in the near future.
* You might be able to determine differences from the large, rotating images on the "On the Road" page, but I never saw it since I clicked on the "Products" link on the top/global navigation and then "Automotive":
Inspired by suggestions & reviews recommending the Garmin nüvi devices, I checked the company website to see what they had to offer.
Of the 31 devices on the page, 24 all look pretty much the same, with no other useful information other than the product name. There's very little useful information from just the picture. I can tell for example, that the 600 series appears to be widescreen, but the 250W is also wide, how would I know to get a 200 series over a 300 series?
This became an arduous process of selecting items to compare... arduous since I can only view 5 at a time, so my first comparison was 200 vs. 300 vs. 600. vs. StreetPilot just to find out what is the difference* of the product lines are.
I was overwhelmed with my choices. I liked that I was able to really dig into the specs down to the level of making my purchase based on if I planned to use my phone to connect to it via bluetooth, but frustrated and confused that there was too much going on. This is the Paradox of Choice... I left Garmin's site and relied on other sources to choose and purchase my product (newegg.com btw).
But then I realized that this is by design; there is a caveat to throw in. The goal of the page linked to would be to get as much information out there about the products as possible. In the Paradox of Choice, there's a story about jelly varieties... when people were allowed to sample items (oddly enough, I believe it's 24 kinds, the same number of relatively similar looking GPS units on the page), they sample quite a few varieties, but purchased a small percentage. When given a choice of only six jellies, they purchased more often. So the idea is that you offer tons of choice if you want to "get the word out" about your product. But you should limit choice when you want users to take action, or make a purchase. Since that's not necessarily the goal of the Garmin site, it makes sense to consider this approach.
Still, there's design considerations that would have rounded out this user experience saving me time, confusion, and frustration. Break the automotive section up, group the series of GPS devices with a couple of marketing words about what target audience each 200,300,600 series device is meant for and provide at least one or two bullets for each product that sets it apart from the rest of the series "Bluetooth connectivity" or "MSN traffic info."
For what it's worth, I settled on a model a few years old now, but it still does everything I'd want to do at a considerable savings... the nüvi 350. I've been wanting to study the UIs of GPS devices for some time now, hopefully some stories will follow in the near future.
* You might be able to determine differences from the large, rotating images on the "On the Road" page, but I never saw it since I clicked on the "Products" link on the top/global navigation and then "Automotive":
WIDGETIZE