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In an entertaining and thought-provoking talk at the London School of Economics on Monday night, writer and former England cricketer Ed Smith made a compelling case for embracing luck in our lives.
The title of the talk – one of a series of public events at LSE – was ‘Luck: what it means and why it matters – in sport and life’. Admittedly, I attended this lecture primarily as a cricket lover, yet I found myself musing on the lessons for user experience (UX) researchers to be found in Ed’s stories about the evermore strenuous – and ultimately futile – attempts of sports coaches to eliminate chance from sport.
There’s a lot of very good published research on the subject of human decision making, and especially the mess we appear to get ourselves in when faced with too much choice.
In Sheena Iyengar’s book “The Art of Choosing” she describes a test set up in a supermarket, where a kiosk was offering Jam tasting samples to customers. It turned out that customers were far more likely to buy at least one Jam when only six variants were offered, than when the tasting range included 24 varieties.
It’s all tied up with the fear of making a bad decision. The more options you have, the more likely you are NOT to find the ‘best’ choice for you. This is even more true if your time to assess the options available is limited.
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