Every designer has a daily dilemma between being minimalist or adding more details to reduce cognitive load.

So many vows…they make you swear and swear. Defend the king. Obey the king. Keep his secrets. Do his bidding. Your life for his. But obey your father. Love your sister. Protect the innocent. Defend the weak. Respect the gods. Obey the laws. It’s too much. No matter what you do, you’re forsaking one vow or the other. — GOT

This is one of my favorite quotes from Game of Thrones. It reminds me that every choice situation is not as simple as picking a color between white and black. As a matter of fact, most dilemmas involve similar options with vague futures, and we can’t be sure what is the right choice until we see the outcome.

Generally, we evaluate the quality of a decision based on its result instead of the process, which is commonly referred to as outcome bias.

Character limits on Twitter are evaluated positively because the result is positive, but this option was not deemed rational at the decision point.

Design professionals weigh the pros and cons before deciding and, for greater certainty, testing with various methods of usability testing. However, usability testing does not guarantee the same result as working with many different end-users on the real market.

However, that does not mean determining the opportunities and obstacles is pointless.

In this article, I share my experience. But first, a few definitions.

Interaction cost

The interaction cost is the sum of efforts — mental and physical — that the users must deploy in interacting with a site in order to reach their goals. — nngroup

In terms of interaction cost, every act and thought is considered to be a cost. Not every interaction has the same cost. Vertical scrolling, for example, has a lower interaction cost than horizontal scrolling.

A user experience designer’s job is to reduce interaction costs as much as possible.

Sense of control

According to studies such as Learned Helplessness, people who feel they lack control are frustrated, impatient, and inefficient.

Even if this is just an illusion, people need to feel they have control. Making it happen is our job as product designers.

The paradox of choice

Having more options and details can make us unhappy, according to the paradox of choice. These are the two reasons why it occurs.

1. By choosing one option from many offered, we give up all others, and since we will not know what the other options offer in terms of outcome or satisfaction, we are never satisfied with our final decision.
2. Having many choices increases cognitive load and interaction costs for reading and analyzing data, preventing us from making a decision.

To increase satisfaction, we must reduce the options in design.

As you can see, expanding the options gives you a sense of control, but at the same time, it creates a paradox of choice and increases the interaction costs of the system.

Let’s talk about my experience.

It’s clear that users must accept a Privacy Policy and Terms & Conditions when they sign up. There are three ways to do it.

1. Unselected checkbox: it creates the illusion of control but requires interaction costs.
2. Selected checkbox: It creates an illusion of control without increasing interaction costs, however, the user experiences less control than unselected checkboxes.
3. Inform box: minimizes interaction costs, but lacks a sense of control.

Before you continue, take a moment to consider your choice.

We need to think outside these three options to come up with a solution.

To give the user a greater sense of control over the system, I added the optional checkbox.