Every day we make hundreds, if not thousands of decisions. Some are very small - like "which foot will I step out of my bed first?". Some can be very impactful - "will I skip gym today?" or "I'm going to doomscroll instead of doing house chores" (though of course we don't "say it like this out loud - we just sort of "roll" with the decision). And though most of them are often distilled into the binary decision of "I do it or I do not do it", there is a lot of underlying nuance humans have behind every decision, no matter how big. With the pace of life speeding up exponentially in the last century, this evershifting "nuance" is continuing to develop in all of us as we adapt to the fast-paced life in today's age.

Of course, this problem easily ties in with many mental "walks" our minds can take - such as overthinking, anxiety - and other possible variables. However, for the sake of the concept, I'd like to focus on the aspect of thinking before the decision - and doing so by taking away control from the users. I see that decision fatigue is often caused by the uncertainty of big decisions - choosing a university, changing jobs or engaging in personal relationships are all too often overwhelming decisions to make. As an inspiration to offload this decision-making, I think back to 2010 when a random octopus became an internet phenomenon by selecting football World Cup matchup winners (and often so, accurately). Of course, one could think of it as just a random coincidence, and they probably wouldn't be too far off (though math of so many consecutive successes on 50-50 is saying it is very improbable). Regardless, I like to think that many people used the "octopus" prediction to place their bets during the World Cup. 

Conceptually, I think of the robot to be presented by the user a decision to make - and without too much hesitation, select one of the options. Taking away control over the decisions from the users will (hopefully) provoke an emotional reaction - maybe even fear - with the aim of the robot to help people who struggle with decision fatigue to not dwell too much on the unimportant stuff - and to not overthink the important decisions. The end goal is promoting the "going with your gut feeling when applicable" behaviour - allowing people to feel less anxiety and overwhelming emotions whilst making decisions. I'm also aiming it to be lighthearted - using humour and not taking itself too seriously - to alleviate some of the pressure; I think it would thus be able to prompt deeper reflection from within, rather than acting super serious from the get-go.