I like coffee and, most days, have a cup of cappuccino, latte or mocha. Always the same size: regular. Always the same type of milk: regular. No cream, sugar or sweetener of any kind. Just coffee, milk and chocolate if we are talking about a mocha. I normally prepare it myself (mocha at home, cappucino with a plunger at work); but some times I feel like having a real espresso, rather than using a plunger and I go to a cafe.
The closest cafe to work is easy to deal with. I just have to order and answer two questions: regular (for size) and to go (as oppossed to have here). Done! Depending on the level of attention span of the dependant I could try to say ‘one regular cappuccino to go’, but that does not always work. In contrast, I can go to the shopping mall and visit Starbucks and get a glimpse of infinity while answering questions that are for the ‘grande mocha, double shot, vanilla syrup, light soy milk, fat free cream’ crowd. Probably there should be two lines: no options paying cash, bells and whistles paying with a credit card. Imagine the extra time available for actually drinking the coffee while reading a book!
How many service or product interactions would benefit from the same streamlining? Not long ago, Joel Spolsky wrote an essay (or may be a rant) about the start button in windows, which I could not agree any more about. Normally, when I finish working with my mac laptop I close the lid and that’s it. Later I open the lid and there I have my computer, in the same state as when I closed it. Simple. I know, there are other options for turning it off — particularly if one is not going to use it for a while — but I use that less than 1 in 10 times. So, why bother with interrupting my easy flow with options? May be computers should have an advanced preference somewhere, that would make available all sort of options that I do not need, including: the ones for the start menu, the overwrite key in the wordprocessor, the popup windows for updates of operating system, F12 for dashboard junk in OS X, etc. Life would be simpler this way.
If I know what I want — which is often the case — I do not want options: they are distractions that waste my time and I feel grumpy about it. The default state may not be perfect, but I can live with it. If I do not know what I want — well, I am not perfect — I would like to be exposed to only few options, say two, so it is easy to make a decision. Once I have more decisions to make, I can guide the process to a much more customised solution; however, I am not any happier and I keep thinking that I may have chosen the wrong combination of traits.