Design Choices that Don’t Overload the Mind
Searching amongst alternatives and deciding between similar options takes a tanker of mental energy. Indeed, if I have many similar alternatives, it can take too much mental work to compare them and I may defer making a choice at all, or so argues the excellent article, Testing the tyranny of too much choice against the allure of more choice, in the March issue of the Journal of Psychology and Marketing.
The entire issue is devoted to Assortment Structure and Choice and is a must read for cognitive designers.