52 Behaviors in 52 Weeks: Week 3 — Decision Fatigue and User Choices
Understanding how customers think.
52 Behaviors in 52 Weeks is a weekly exploration into the psychology of user experience design and the nuances behind customer decision-making. This series unpacks how human behavior impacts digital products, offering actionable insights for designers, product managers, developers, and product leaders.
Week 3 — Decision Fatigue and User Choices
If you have ever felt overwhelmed by too many choices or noticed that your customers struggle with decision-making and time-on-task, you are not alone. This week, we’ll dive into a phenomenon that affects us all — decision fatigue.
Decision fatigue refers to the deteriorating quality of decisions someone makes after a long decision-making session. It’s widespread in daily life and user interface design.
Think about the last time you tried to order coffee at a Starbucks with a seemingly endless menu of options — cappuccino, latte, espresso, flat white, mocha, macchiato — each with multiple milk and syrup options. How do people decide what to order?
Or maybe you’ve tried to choose a phone plan, bombarded with various bundles, providers, data limits, phone options, and contract…
