Designing Choices
Design the decision, not just the option: defaults, framing, mapping, and structure all shape what people choose, so arrange the easy path to be the good one without removing freedom.
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- 8 existing graph entries
- 1
Structure Drives Behavior
A system's behavior is produced by its structure, the way its parts and flows are arranged, not by the intentions or quality of the people inside it. To change the behavior, change the structure. Conway's Law is a special case: an organization's communication structure shapes...
Start from the lens: behavior follows the structure of the options, not only the intentions of the chooser.
Related within this path
- References: Choice Architecture
- 2
Choice Architecture
The design of the environment in which a decision is presented: the order and number of options, the defaults, the wording, and the feedback. The person who arranges these is a "choice architect." There is no neutral arrangement; every design influences what people choose. Bec...
See that every way of presenting options is already a design that shapes the decision.
Related within this path
- References: Structure Drives Behavior
- Related To: Default Options
- Related To: Framing Effects
- Related To: Nudge
- Related To: Structuring Complex Choices
- 3
Default Options
The outcome that takes effect when a person does nothing. Because of inertia, limited attention, and status quo bias, most people stay with whatever is preset, so the default quietly determines the result for the majority. Defaults are the single most powerful tool in choice a...
Use the strongest lever: what happens if the person does nothing.
Related within this path
- Related To: Choice Architecture
- Related To: Framing Effects
- Related To: Nudge
- 4
Framing Effects
The same information or choice produces different decisions depending on how it is described. Logically equivalent framings, gains versus losses or survival versus mortality, are not psychologically equivalent. Because System 1 reacts to the description rather than the underly...
Notice how the same choice, framed differently, pulls decisions in different directions.
Related within this path
- Related To: Choice Architecture
- Related To: Default Options
- 5
Mapping
The relationship between controls and their effects. Natural mapping uses spatial or physical analogy so the correspondence is grasped immediately, like stove burners laid out in the same arrangement as their knobs. Good mapping lets people operate something correctly on the f...
Make the link between options and outcomes legible, so choices can be informed.
- 6
Structuring Complex Choices
How a choice is organized when options are numerous or attributes are hard to compare: how many options are shown, how they are grouped and ordered, which are eliminated, and what aids help people compare. With few options people weigh attributes directly; as options multiply...
Help people navigate many options without overload.
Related within this path
- Related To: Choice Architecture
- Related To: Nudge
- 7
Nudge
Any feature of choice architecture that predictably alters people's behavior without forbidding any options or significantly changing their economic incentives. To count as a nudge, the intervention must be easy and cheap to avoid: a default you can change, not a mandate; a re...
Arrange the easy path to be the good one, without removing the freedom to choose otherwise.
Related within this path
- Related To: Choice Architecture
- Related To: Default Options
- Related To: Structuring Complex Choices
- 8
Verification Over Authorship
The durable difficulty in software was never typing the code; it was deciding what the code should do and establishing that it actually does it. Producing an implementation is the cheap, fast part; specifying intent precisely and verifying correctness is the scarce, hard, last...
Close on the thesis: when execution is cheap, the scarce work is deciding what good looks like and structuring toward it, not producing more options faster.