Choice Architecture for Human-Computer Interaction

Today's always-available interactive computing technology can be exploited in many ways to help people make preferential choices in everyday life: choices which depend on the tastes, values, current goals, abilities, and situation of the chooser. Some websites and applications are devoted primarily to helping people make such choices (e.g., about commercial products or health-related behavior); even in systems that have other primary goals, the user frequently needs to make preferential choices. The goal of enhancing choosability-the ability to make satisfying preferential choices-should therefore join other traditional HCI goals (such as enhancing learnability). But pursuing the goal of choosability requires us to make effective use of the vast knowledge that has been acquired about the psychology of human choice and decision making, which has so far not been presented in a way that makes it accessible and useful to HCI researchers and practitioners. This book fills this gap. It focuses on preferential choices about the everyday use of computing technology, but the synthesis and theoretical framework presented are largely applicable to other types of everyday choice.