Social scientist's ideas spread in Rails culture

Barry Schwartz is the author of "The Paradox of Choice" and a psychology professor at Swarthmore College. He recently gave a speech at Google and his ideas are spreading around the Rails circles. I believe his philosophy provides a lot of insight into some design principles used by 37 Signals in their web products - and of course the Rails framework itself.

In Schwartz's video at Google, he makes a number of fascinating points. First, everyone accepts that freedom of choice is good. However it may actually be the case that the current social trend in the explosion of choice may actually be contributing to decision paralysis, unhappiness, anxiety, and depression. It may seem counter intuitive, but Schwartz has put together some powerful observations.

Below I've borrowed some bullet points from Swartch's article The Tyranny of choice.

* Shoppers who confront a display of 30 jams or varieties of gourmet chocolate are less likely to purchase any than when they encounter a display of six.

* Students given 30 topics from which to choose to write an extra-credit essay are less likely to write one than those given six. And if they do write one, it tends to be of lower quality.

* The majority of medical patients do not want the decision authority that the canons of medical ethics have thrust upon them. Responsibility for medical decisions looks better to people in prospect than in actuality: Sixty-five percent of respondents say that if they were to get cancer, they would want to be in charge of treatment decisions, but among those who actually have cancer, only 12 percent want that control and responsibility.

* The more funds employers offer their employees in 401(k) retirement plans, the less likely the employees are to invest in any, even though in many cases, failing to do so costs them employer-matching funds of up to several thousand dollars a year.

* When maximizers, as opposed to satisficers, go shopping for big items or small ones, they spend more time looking, have a harder time deciding, look around more at what others are buying, and are less satisfied with their purchases.

* Maximizing college seniors send out more résumés, investigate more different fields, go on more job interviews, and get better, higher-paying jobs than satisficers. But they are less satisfied with the jobs, and are much more stressed, anxious, frustrated, and unhappy with the process.

So what does all this mean about web design and Rails?

The web design aspect is an easier sell. The recent rise in popularity of "real" web usability supports less choice and less effort by the user altogether. I would say this is so accepted that discussion has shifted away from whether less is more and directly into how to achieve less.

The design of a web framework is a different matter altogether. Most believe that its okay to simplify things for the users of our website, but when it comes to making the web application; things are and must be complex. After all, we are brilliant programmers and we must feed our great intellect.

Needless to say this isn't the mentality of Railers. I'm not going to actually go into all the ways Rails has achieved its simplicity and beauty, but I did want to clarify that simplicity isn't actually a way to get away with putting less effort into the design of a framework. I suggest that its actually more difficult to define conventions and limit choice. Its an awesome burden, and I feel fortunate that our Rails leaders will bear the psychological trauma of weighing out all the options for us.

Posted by Jeffrey Hicks at 11:35 PM  Permalink

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