How Much Personalization is Needed in UX Design?

Personalization and customization are effective UX technologies that help users avoid generic and unnecessary content. Instead, they provide people with a more relevant, up-to-date, and individual experience.

However, in many cases personalization creates additional problems for end users, causing them to feel frustrated because the content seems irrelevant, excessive, or useless. Moreover, excessive personalization can make users think the service compromises their privacy, causing them to leave the system as quickly as possible.

What is Personalization in UX Design?

Personalization allows UX designers to create user journeys that meet the unique requirements of customers and provide an experience based on their individual needs. When we say a product or service is personalized, we mean that it anticipates user expectations and aligns with their goals. This makes design solutions more useful, engaging, and easier to digest.

Many confuse personalization with customization, believing these terms mean the same thing. However, there is a significant difference between them.

Personalization occurs when UX elements, based on customer data, meet the individual needs of each user.
Customization allows users to adjust UX elements themselves according to their individual needs.

Now let's look at how different types of digital products personalize and customize the user experience.

Who Uses the Benefits of UX Personalization and Customization?

UX personalization is most commonly used in e-commerce apps, streaming services, and social media platforms. Here are three typical examples of personalized user experience in these types of digital products.

E-commerce apps. For example, Amazon uses the Amazon Personalize machine learning service to help e-commerce stores create personalized recommendations for their shoppers. It combines and analyzes user interactions, metadata, and product metadata to generate the most relevant offers for customers.
Streaming services. The entire user interface of such platforms is built around individual user preferences. For example, Netflix has implemented a system of personalized movie recommendations that predicts how much a person wants to watch a particular movie based on their previous activity.
Social networks. Have you ever noticed that Facebook (or Meta, as it's now called) shows only certain content in your feed, things you recently searched for? This happens because the platform collects data on each user to create a personalized experience, including ads, news, etc.

These are just a few examples of UX personalization in modern digital solutions. More and more products are turning to personalization and customization. Personalized recommendations and useful notifications are a great way to make digital products engaging.

At this point, it might seem that the more personalized the UX, the more users will become loyal customers. However, this is not always the case. Too much personalization can backfire, and here's why.

When Does Personalization Turn into Hyper-Personalization?

It's quite clear why personalization is important for the UX. It allows products to deliver more relevant and valuable content. Personalization gives users freedom and allows them to tailor interfaces to their requirements. But do these benefits become even greater if you increase the level of personalization and customization in your product's UX design?

Well... not exactly. In fact, the line between "enough" and "too much" is quite thin here. At some point, the buyer is likely to find such "extra personalization" boring, overwhelming, or even creepy.

According to a comprehensive study by the Nielsen Norman Group, excessive personalization in UX leads to a lack of diversity, content fatigue, and homogenization of the user experience. As a result, the product fails to deliver the content users want.

That's why UX designers must be cautious when implementing personalization and customization. Here are the most significant "pitfalls" we always keep in mind when we turn to these solutions in our projects.

Main Problems Caused by Excessive Personalization and Customization

Let's take a closer look at the most common issues related to personalization and customization and analyze their negative impact on user experience.

Insufficient Diversity

When trying to provide users with the most relevant content possible, the product may appear strictly limited to the user's core interests. As a result, it lacks diversity, missing a broader range of content that could interest users. In this case, focusing on individual user preferences prevents the organization from learning more about its target audience and offering more diverse content that still meets their needs.

For example, imagine an app that allows users to browse images. If a person is interested in funny cat pictures, hyper-personalized recommendations will provide them with hundreds of such pictures. However, this approach also restricts access to other types of content. But what if that person also wanted to see dogs and rabbits in their feed? This is where excessive personalization becomes a problem for both the organization and end users:

Organizations lack understanding of individual user needs
End users eventually get tired of the same type of content.

Homogenized Experience

In the same study we mentioned above, NN Group describes one of the most serious consequences of hyper-personalization as a homogenized experience. The study found that participants quickly got bored seeing the same content on Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok. Additionally, they felt the same when receiving similar product suggestions on Amazon. Specifically, users complained about outdated recommendations based on their previous purchases.

The outcomes of solving this problem are quite discouraging. According to the NN Group report, "in some cases, this level of over-personalization caused users to lose interest in these platforms or abandon them altogether."

Placing users in a narrow audience group limits their freedom. Thus, instead of delighting people with attention to their individual interests, personalization becomes annoying if not implemented wisely.

Content Redundancy

Content homogenization is also linked to another common issue with personalization. Targeted content may seem not only boring but also redundant if it duplicates, especially when a person repeatedly encounters the same (or very similar) posts, ads, or recommended products.

This effect is also caused by excessive personalization when the system considers a certain type of content as the user's main interest. However, many people prefer to avoid such duplicates and have a unique online experience.

One of the most common examples of content redundancy is the Instagram feed. People, following certain trends, create tons of similar photos. There's even an account @insta_repeat that highlights this phenomenon. It shows several similar posts made by different users at different times, and they are simply identical.

While redundant content is annoying on social media, it is a major obstacle for advertising. According to MarketingWeek, nearly half of buyers (45%) abandon brands that constantly show the same ad or creative message. As you can see, personalization doesn't help here.

The "Creepy Effect" of Personalization

It's no secret that personalization and customization rely on data that organizations collect about users. However, people tend not to think about it when these methods work correctly, providing them with useful and relevant experiences. In the case of excessive personalization, users may find it not only overdone but also creepy.

In other words, if a user performs one action that leads to receiving a ton of related content, they will likely start worrying about their privacy.

In particular, many users consider personalization "creepy" if they don't understand how certain information was collected. For example, suppose a person searched for cosmetics on their phone on one site and then started receiving relevant recommendations on another site while using a laptop. In that case, the user doesn't understand how their data was processed and used, leading to concern and distrust.

Moreover, it's important to remember that certain information is sensitive. Personalized content based on such data should not appear in front of the user unexpectedly. Good UX should take this factor into account when personalizing and avoid misusing private information (from pregnancy and medical issues to needing psychological help or addiction treatment, etc.).

Cognitive Overload Caused by Excessive Personalization

All the cases described above certainly prove that excessive personalization creates many problems for end users. But what about personalization? Can it be too much?

Too much of anything is never good. Personalization gives users more freedom and control over interfaces. However, at a certain point, this freedom leads to so-called cognitive overload.

According to numerous studies, when using digital products, users don't want to think too much or increase their knowledge level. Instead, they want a simple, intuitive, and goal-oriented design. So, while it's great to allow users to customize some functions to their individual needs, asking them to customize every aspect of a digital solution is not the best idea. Moreover, excessive customization leads to friction, requires too long a learning curve, and can even call into question the product's value.

Now that you know all the potential pitfalls and misuse of personalization and customization, let's see how to make these solutions work as intended. Here are the most effective ways to avoid over-personalization and over-customization in user experience.

How to Prevent Over-Personalization and Over-Customization

When developing an app or platform, the development team must find the right approach to implementing personalization and customization. Of course, the need to apply these UX technologies depends entirely on the product's specifics, its type, and the target audience it is meant to serve.

However, there are a few best practices to avoid unwanted friction. Let's look at them in more detail.

Find the right balance. To avoid the lack of content diversity caused by over-personalization, find a way to consider individual user needs while still providing them with diverse content. For example, Pinterest allows users to add additional categories to their core interests, thus expanding their feed as they wish.
Mix targeted and general content. Users who only see personalized content can quickly get bored with the product. It's better to mix different types of content and give users the opportunity to discover new information or products, even if they aren't based on their initial interests or previous purchases.
Be careful with potentially sensitive information. Users value their privacy, especially when it comes to sensitive