Option paralysis

To flounder in a sea of commodities, where too much and nothing at all make no difference, having to choose out of too many stimuli and too few meaningful motives.

Never before have we been so rich and wealthy as today. “We” here stands for a small part of the world population living in Europe, North America and some other parts of the globe. Depending on our definition of “rich” and “poor” it could be said that some ten percent of the world’s “materially rich” suffer terribly from a strange disease that first appeared and was labelled in the USA as “option paralysis”. The positive side of the “malady” is that ninety percent of humankind is unaffected by it.
The sad side is that at the other end of the economic spectrum the “no-option-at-all” group is also growing.

Option paralysis occurs whenever there are so many alternatives to pick and choose from that any choice turns into a dire quandary, giving rise to a sort of behavioural inertia. Sixty-seven different types of yoghurt were put out on the shelf in a food-store but demand faltered. The assortment was cut down to fifteen and the sales volume of the reference yoghurt started growing again.
A visit to a toy shop with a sevenyear old can be eye opening.
Given the freedom to choose whatever pleases her/him the child will quite often be stuck for a decision. During the war a friend in Belgrade sent her thirteen-year old daughter out of the country to Belgium. The girl decided to buy herself a pair of shoes. In but a single afternoon my daughter, our guest and I visited more footwear outlets than what I would normally
do in a year. After hunting for the shoes all day she didn’t find what she was looking for. I couldn’t help commenting to her how a city with empty stores and one whose stores are chock-full of goods can end up having the same effect on the consumer.

Some restaurants, that I call smart, do offer a reduced menu. Some shops seem to have made a small selection for the customer, thus limiting “multiple” to “double” or “triple” choice. Colette, for instance, store in Paris that only carries and displays a very small number of articles of the same kind.
Their selection criterion is “good design”. The (mostly wealthy) customer with little shopping time is sure to find the best lamp, the funniest clothes, and the finest tableware, while the ultimate Nike’s are just three tables away. The owner of a bookstore once complained to me that he was at an utter loss as to what books to buy.
“Editors just print too many books; I simply can’t cope with the selection anymore, and neither can my customers”, he moaned.

Moral: one wouldn’t be far off the mark in predicting that over the next decade designers will be devoting part of their time and energy not so much to diversifying but to cutting down on available options. In order to bring some order (and decency) into the world of material commodities and consumption designers will have to drive the message home to manufacturers that also on the shelf … “less can be more”.