Making good decisions is harder than it sounds. In theory, we look at the options and carefully weigh the pros and cons of each before choosing the one that makes the most sense. In practice, if the sensible choice doesn’t match what our emotions are telling us, we “go with our gut”. This is code for “make a poor choice”.
Not all decisions are created equal; choosing a spouse is not the same as choosing a donut, but they all involve paying attention. Since there’s often new information involved with making a decision (otherwise you’d know what to do without thinking about it), we have to pay attention to that new information so that we can evaluate its impact on the choice before us. Decision support tools are at their best when they feed us new information carefully through attention management. Too much new information can be overwhelming, and this can cause us to make emotional decisions rather than logical ones.
I drive on the Massachusetts Turnpike almost every day. It’s a toll road; when you drive onto “the Pike” you take a ticket, and when you get off you have to pay a fee based on how far you traveled. There are also two large plazas on the eastern section of the Pike that are not associated with getting on or off, they are mainly for suburban commuters getting in and out of Boston. These are called “toll plazas”. It used to be common to see confused drivers at the Toll Plazas gazing at the signs while trying to decide which lane to use. It’s been many months since I last saw someone trying to back out of the wrong lane.
Why?
Two things; first, they reduced the number of choices from five (seen in the image at left) to two;
1. EZPass (electronic payment via transponder)
2. Cash Only
Fewer choices make decision making easier because there’s less information to actively think about. The Massachusetts Turnpike Authority also improved the signage before the tolls to pre-load the decision-making process. Driving a car is not exactly challenging for most people, but it does require sustained attention to the road and traffic. Good information design should be able to support a driver even at 70 mph and help them to make the decision long before they actually reach the toll plaza. Let’s take a look at the signs on the Pike to see how well they manage our attention.
About two miles from the toll plaza, a small yellow sign is seen. It has only two pieces of information on it, “TOLL PLAZA” and “2 MILES”. This is ideal, because consumers of this information are traveling at high speed. They can take their attention safely away from the road for a second or two at most. They can’t attend to more than a little bit of novel information, so it needs to be easy to read and understand, like this sign. Only one of the pieces of information is likely to be unfamiliar to some drivers (“TOLL PLAZA”), and since it’s still two miles away, there’s time to think about what it might mean without much pressure.
One mile later, another sign appears, much larger and with flashing lights at each corner. This has also only one new piece of information, “CAUTION”. Drivers have now been primed that there is a toll plaza coming up (whatever that is), and they should be cautious. They also know it’s about a minute or so away. So far, these two signs show good attention management.
About a half mile from the toll plaza, drivers are told that there is a choice coming up. The choices are “EZPass” or “Cash Only”, and they are presented on one sign. Even though there’s eight separate data points on this sign, we’ve already seen most of them. The only really new information is that we’re going to have to pay some money up ahead. The driver just needs to decide between “EZPass” and “Cash Only”, which can easily be processed as a choice between purple and green. Imagine how much harder it would be for drivers to process the information on this sign if they had not seen the previous two signs.
Now that the driver has made the choice, the signs guide them to the correct lane primarily through color. The signs can be split without risk to our ability to pay attention because the information is not new, only the location is. The driver does not need to read the text; they just need to align themselves under the correct sign.
By the time the driver reaches the toll plaza, they are no longer making a choice; they are simply acting on an earlier choice and using the subtle cues that they have been carefully fed to get through the toll plaza without incident.
By directing driver attention to the right signal at the right time, the information designers have enabled drivers to make a decision within the context of an attention-heavy task. It’s impressive, and even more importantly, it’s effective; I can’t remember the last time I saw a driver trying to reverse out of an EZPass lane to avoid the $50 penalty.
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