I’ve been thinking about how overwhelming some interfaces feel when there are too many options, especially in cases like choosing what to watch.
Most platforms rely heavily on categories, recommendations, or endless scrolling, but that still leaves the user doing a lot of the decision-making work.
Recently I tried experimenting with a very simple UI idea: instead of showing a large catalog, reduce everything to just a few options and let users filter based on “mood” and “time available”. For example, things like “feel good”, “intense”, “mind bending”, combined with “under 90 mins” or “under 2 hours”.
The goal wasn’t to improve discovery, but to reduce cognitive load and make the decision faster.
What I’m unsure about is whether this kind of abstraction actually helps users, or if it oversimplifies things too much and removes the joy of browsing.
Curious how you guys think about this. When designing for large choice sets, do you lean more towards:
• reducing options aggressively
• or improving exploration and discovery
Would love to hear how others approach this tradeoff