The Menu That Decides the Question
Article by Ayman Fouad Abdelgawad
A form asks why you are leaving. There are five possible answers, none of which describes your reason. You choose the nearest one because the next button will not work until you do.
Later, a report will describe what users said.
The difficulty is subtle. The system has collected a genuine action, but the meaning attached to that action exceeds what the interface allowed you to express. Your answer is partly a description of your preference and partly a record of the menu's limitations.
Categories are unavoidable. A service cannot anticipate every possible account, and structured answers can reveal patterns that would otherwise be difficult to notice. The problem begins when the convenience of the categories is mistaken for completeness.
An interface can leave room for an unlisted reason, allow a person to skip a question, or explain what a selection will be used for. These choices make the resulting information less tidy. They may also make it more truthful.
The same principle applies to recommendations. Before comparing the options, we should sometimes ask who decided which options would be visible. A choice can be voluntary while still being carefully bounded.
Good design does more than make a selected action easy. It gives a person enough expressive room to avoid misrepresenting themselves on the way through.
The report at the end should remember the form at the beginning. Otherwise the institution may believe it has learned what people wanted when it has mainly learned which available answer they could tolerate.