Design for How People Think

Chapter 13 Decision Making: Following the Breadcrumbs

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Decision Making: Following the Breadcrumbs

When it comes to decision making, we’re trying to figure out what problems customers are really trying to solve and the decisions they have to make along the way (Figure 13-1). What are they trying to accomplish, and what information do they need to make a decision at this moment in time?

With decision making, we’re asking questions like:

• What is the user trying to accomplish?
• What does their overall decision-making process look like?
• What facts do they need to make their decision and solve their problem?
• What do they need at each stage of problem solving?
• When do they seem to be overwhelmed and “satisfice”?
• What middle-of-the-road, “sensible” option do they default to?

Figure 13-1

Decision making

What Am I Doing? Goals and Journeys

We want to focus on all the subgoals customers need to accomplish to get from their initial state to their final goal.

Your customer’s end goal might be to make a cake, but to get there, they are embarking on a journey with quite a few steps along the way. First, they are going to need to find a recipe, get all the ingredients, and put them together according to the recipe’s instructions. Within the recipe, there are many more steps—turning on the oven, getting out the right-sized pan, sifting the flour, mixing the dry ingredients ...