Member-only story
UX DESIGN
Analysis Paralysis: how to overcome the UX designer’s ultimate block?
Analysis paralysis is one of the most common blocks in a UX designer’s life. Just like writers experience writer’s block, designers also have blockages that stop them from proceeding ahead.
What is Analysis Paralysis?
Consider yourself as a hungry customer who was about to make a PB&J sandwich, but you realise you just ran out of jelly. Now, you decide that you will ‘shop’ for it in your local supermarket. Within 10 minutes of car-ride, you reach the supermarket, and you head straight to the ‘jams and marmalades’ section. Wait. You didn’t even know that such a section exists!
Jams and marmalades have a whole section to themselves? Holy…
You ask yourself this question, your hunger is at its extreme, you can’t decide which one to buy, there are more than a hundred varieties, so you move towards the frozen pizza section, grab a pizza and checkout. You don’t enjoy that peanut butter and jelly sandwich that you craved for, but settle for a bland frozen pizza instead.
Now, what happened here is ‘analysis paralysis’ or what we say ‘paralysis’ of analysis.
The technical definition says — Analysis paralysis is overanalysing or overthinking a situation or subject to the point that decision making is delayed. But giving the user ‘more’ choices also contributes to analysis paralysis.
Here, in this case, the decision making was delayed to a point that the frustrated user ran away from the store without purchasing even a single bottle of jelly!
How could it be solved?
Now, let’s go back to the user problem. It states that—
‘User can’t decide which jam s/he should buy?’
But as a UX designer, what is your responsibility here? To solve the problem. Right, but how? Start with ‘reading’ the problem statement and finding those…
