Making a lot of decisions lowers users' ability to make rational ones.
<aside> ℹ️ Decision fatigue describes how our decision-making gets worse as we make additional choices and our cognitive abilities get worn out. Decision fatigue is the reason we feel overwhelmed when we have too many choices to make.
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Decision fatigue is a cognitive shortcut that causes irrational trade-offs in decision-making. One prominent example is Barack Obama’s presidential outfits. He claims to have worn the same colored suits every day so as to limit the number of decisions he has to make. Obama understood decision fatigue and how it can compromise the quality of important choices.
The phenomena of decision fatigue can affect even the most rational and intelligent individuals, as everyone can become mentally exhausted. The more decisions made throughout the day, the harder each decision becomes for us. Eventually, the brain looks for shortcuts to circumvent decision fatigue, leading to poor decision-making.
Decision fatigue causes the quality of our decisions to decline as we become mentally exhausted. Decision fatigue causes us to make poor decisions, because, as we reach mental exhaustion, our brains take illogical shortcuts to aid us in our decision-making. These shortcuts result in less deliberate decisions. Another shortcut involves procrastinating the decision-making task.1
We assume that people are using the product to complete a task, and the more smoothly and intuitively it goes, the better. The more small decisions an individual is asked to make over a specific period, even if they’re trivial (like which show to watch on Netflix), the lower their quality of decision-making will be.
When you’re tired, this can significantly impact your ability to make decisions, and UX designers must know how fatigue affects users when they design interfaces for them.
Why do we make worse decisions at the end of the day?
Ways to Reduce Cognitive Demand When Designing UX
Decision fatigue and user experience
How Design Experts Can Help Clients Overcome Decision Fatigue
