Do users like choice? How much should I give them?

Question

I built a photo slideshow web page as an exercise for myself.

One thing I found myself doing was adding a Settings button. Clicking this reveals a little settings pane that lets a user choose between two different transitions (or no transition at all), as well as between Slow, Medium, or Fast for the transition's speed.

I didn't want to make the button obtrusive, so it's hidden most of the time: if a user moves their mouse near the button it fades to partly visible Otherwise, it's hidden. Additionally, to show the users that it exists, it's partly visible for a second or two when they first load the webpage.

I don't have a lot of UX experience, and one of the biggest things I've been asking myself is, 'Do users actually want/need these choices? Will they be a cool feature or just confusing or annoying?'

In general, what's the best practice when it comes to giving users options or choices?

Answer 1

If you choose to have a settings button, you should make sure it's always discoverable. Users can be distracted at any point of time and for any length of time - don't rely on those two seconds after page loading, because the user might just be busy looking at the whole page (or that other tab she was loading simultaneously).

Now whether you choose to give the user that settings page at all is entirely up to you. Find out who will use that page and design it accordingly. If you will be the main user, it's trivial. Otherwise, keep in mind: You are not your user, and you're quite likely to be wrong when you're just guessing (we all are).

In my opinion (and I don't mean to patronize, so forgive me if it sounds that way), if you want to do it properly - even though it's "just" a personal side project - you should try to find out what your users want, ideally by showing them the page and actually watching them use it. It's called Usability Testing, and Steve Krug has written a great book about it.

Answer 2

I think that this talk is very useful in relation to your question:

http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/barry_schwartz_on_the_paradox_of_choice.html

The presenter discusses the implications of how choice and the abundance of choice affects people both positively and negatively.

Answer 3

This reading may help: Iyengar, S. and Lepper, M. (2000) When choice is demotivating: Can one desire too much of a good thing? Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. 79: 995-1006.

Sheena Iyengar has also written other pieces on choice and it's effect on decision-making.

Answer 4

If displaying pictures is the main purpose of your page (ie, you're making a photo gallery), then having fine-grained controls is a great idea. Just make sure they're not in the way.

But, if you're using a slideshow to supplement an existing web page (ie, adding a screenshots to a product landing page), you probably don't need slideshow controls because the pictures aren't the main purpose of the page. (You'll rarely hear visitors say "I love your website — but you could add a checkerboard animation to the screenshots area? Then I'll buy ...")

So, be careful not to over-engineer.

Answer 5

Settings are a good idea as long as they are kept to somewhat of a minimum. You don't want to overwhelm them with options, but something like what you did here is a perfect example of options a user might want. Some people love transitions, and others are annoyed, and want it just to change quickly. Also the way you presented it initially and then faded it back was a nice way to hint that it is there, but prevents it from being obtrusive.

Answer 6

Alan Cooper suggests designing for the intermediate users.

The thinking being that users don't remain beginners for long but very rarely will they put in the time to become experts.

Those on the sales side want the design to cater to beginners because that is where sales happens.

Programmers want the design to cater to experts because they want power over their understanding of the implementation.

Sounds like the right track is to keep it discoverable and verify with some user testing.

Answer 7

On general web choice psychology Susan Weinschenk has some interesting perspectives in her book "What makes them click". Perhaps, also her new book "100 Things Every Designer Needs to Know About People" could be useful as well (haven't read it yet, though).

Answer 8

As much as people want choice, they don't want to have to make too many decisions. Apple, as an example, errs on the side of less choice, providing only the options which 80% of users need, even if most of them never even touch the settings.

In this specific case, a better way of showing UI elements which would otherwise be hidden is to have them visible as the mouse moves, if the user is commonly not moving the mouse, mind you.

QuickTime X and other video players are good examples of the "on-demand UI".

Answer 9

One consideration not brought out in the other answers is the difference between what is available and what is prominent. Your settings interface should expose the options that are most important to most of your users, which you will identify through user testing, review of comparable sites, analytics (seeing what people actually do post-release), or other means. You should be reviewing both which settings to expose and how many to expose, the latter to avoid "analysis paralysis".

However, you may have more-specialized options that a smaller number of users will care about, but they'll care enough to really want them. Some places you'll find these "in the wild": the "advanced" button in a configuration interface, Firefox's about:config settings, and those extra controls on your digital camera that fine-tune light levels, white balance, etc. In all of these cases the default behaavior is reasonable for most users, but those requiring extra control -- because they're advanced, because they have accessibility needs, or just because they're very particular for some other reason -- are available.

How much of this should you do? That really depends on your research and your context. For an application that people will be "living in" (like an operating system), you'll probably end up with more. For a web site that users will spend 15 minutes on, anything beyond basic settings is probably overkill, so be governed by your use cases.

One last thought: there is no value to settings that users don't know are there. If you have an interface, make sure it is discoverable. This might mean always-present (persistent gear icon, for example) or contextually-dependent (YouTube's player controls that appear when you mouse over a video that's playing). I'm having trouble thinking of a case where only time-based is a good idea, particularly for a web site where someone might have chosen "open in new tab" and won't even look for some time yet.

Answer 10

I think this is more of a question of your target audience, and who will actually be using your creation.

I am all for making things more pleasurable to use, and controls like the ones you are talking about could be nice to have, depending on who is going to end up using it.

For me, as an amateur photographer when dealing with photography, the less distractions while I am actually looking at photos the better, so I actually like your idea of handling the settings button, as long as it is unobtrusive.

It seems like you are on the right track. As long as you make the options easy to use and not there just for the sake of being there... If you feel that the options you are giving the user enhance their experience, then go for it. If it doesn't add anything useful that your target audience will actually use, then there is really no point in adding it.