[HN Gopher] Settings are not a design failure
___________________________________________________________________
Settings are not a design failure
Author : tommoor
Score : 204 points
Date : 2022-02-02 18:00 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (linear.app)
(TXT) w3m dump (linear.app)
| ptx wrote:
| > _One of the small preferences we introduced in the Linear app
| is not displaying the mouse cursor pointer over links. We want to
| mimic the feeling you natively have on the desktop with our Mac
| app._
|
| Hmm. This might actually be an example of settings as a result of
| design failure.
|
| The text in the screenshot describes the setting as applying not
| just to links but to "any interactive element". But most native
| desktop apps (which they're trying to mimic) would use a special
| cursor for links and a regular mouse cursor for other interactive
| elements, so it seems that (by entangling links and other
| interactive elements) the setting allows a choice of two
| incorrect behaviours instead of just behaving correctly by
| default.
| enra wrote:
| The text is maybe confusing but how it works is that the
| setting is either "Native" or "Web" style.
|
| Native means that interactive elements like toolbar items, nav
| or icons are just show the regular cursor and links in text use
| the pointer (Mail app)
|
| Web style is what is common with many web apps and sites where
| every interactive element uses the pointer (Slack).
|
| The reason for the setting that people seem to be one way or
| the other on which they are used to.
| deathanatos wrote:
| Are you using one of "pointer" or "cursor" (which are
| synonyms, to me[1]) to refer to either an I-beam cursor, or
| the hand cursor, commonly used to indicate a clickable
| hyperlink?
|
| (I actually dislike how text in native apps _doesn 't_ often
| permit the use of I-beam; it'd be a lot easier to copy/paste
| errors if one could highlight them.)
|
| [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cursor_(user_interface)#Po
| inte...
| paulirish wrote:
| In CSS, the hand cursor is called a 'pointer' cursor, so I
| think that's what was intended. For anyone who hasn't
| internalized this, including the app's users, I imagine
| this is quite confusing. :)
|
| IIUC 'regular cursor' is just the default mouse cursor. I
| don't think anyone meant the I-beam/text cursor, but I
| agree with your selection comment entirely.
| enra wrote:
| Yup. In css the attribute that controls the pointer is
| called 'cursor' these are two types are 'default' and
| 'pointer. [1]
|
| In MacOS these are called pointers with 'arrow' and
| 'pointing hand' styles [2]
|
| Not sure what Windows calls it but some googling shows
| them as 'standard select' and 'link select'.
|
| [1]: http://www.javascripter.net/faq/stylesc.htm
|
| [2]: https://developer.apple.com/design/human-interface-
| guideline...
| bigcat123 wrote:
| jdub wrote:
| Don't make me tap the sign.
|
| https://ometer.com/preferences.html
| frickinLasers wrote:
| Ugh. As a not-really-power user I can't stand Gnome 3, not
| least because I have to Google how to and then install a tool
| just to make useful settings accessible. Everything in Tweaks
| should be in the default settings panel.
| saint-loup wrote:
| "First of all, remind yourself that users love settings."
|
| [Citation needed]
|
| Just like for any UX debate: _it depends_. The level of
| customization needed depends on the type of app, the type of
| user, the type of use case.
| deanCommie wrote:
| Users love customization until they hate the result.
| [deleted]
| ahartmetz wrote:
| Flashbacks of MySpace...
| motoxpro wrote:
| I saved this. This is sooooo insightful
| bhauer wrote:
| How about this rewrite: _Some_ users love settings.
|
| Yes, it's an exercise for the developer to know their audience
| and their affinity for settings.
|
| As a user of software, I agree with the author: I am generally
| happier with software that is highly configurable to my
| preferences versus software that is rigid and limited to the
| tastes of the developer.
|
| Of course, this is a continuum; I am not so obsessed with
| configurability that I build my own customized OS from source.
| But a healthy settings/options/preferences panel is a way to
| earn my interest as a user.
| Sohcahtoa82 wrote:
| > How about this rewrite: Some users love settings.
|
| Yup.
|
| I'm definitely one of those users. Sure, most of the time,
| the defaults are great. But there are probably so many things
| some software can do that people don't know because they
| never even bothered to poke through the settings.
|
| If a piece of software has a slightly annoying behavior of
| some sort, the first thing I do is go to the Settings to see
| if it's optional. When I get a new phone, the first thing I
| do is check out what settings it offers. I'll even enable
| Developer mode (Mainly for the feature to show a circle on
| where I touch the screen).
| themacguffinman wrote:
| You're just proving the opposite point: Settings are a
| failure of design.
|
| Why do you visit settings? Because there's a slightly
| annoying behavior that you want to change. Because the
| defaults aren't always great.
|
| But the slightly annoying behavior is a failure of design,
| it shouldn't have existed in the first place. The defaults
| should always have been great.
| notatoad wrote:
| my experience is that users love personalization, but not
| necessarily "settings". if they have to change a setting to get
| the functionality they need out of your app, they're going to
| be frustrated. even if that functionality is one-off weird
| stuff that makes no sense to be enabled by default.
|
| as long as the app does what they want out of the box, they
| love unnecessary stuff like setting a custom background image
| or theme color.
| mmphosis wrote:
| Using the word "Settings" is a design failure. For example, when
| I right click on my so-called modern desktop, there is a longish
| drop down menu with a "Desktop Settings..." menu item in it which
| goes to a window named "Desktop" and defaults to the Background
| tab. On my more antiquated OS, the menu item is named "Change
| Desktop Background..." which seems more obvious / discoverable.
| jesprenj wrote:
| Is it just me or does the website flash with content for a second
| which is then replaced with a fake "Not found" display?
|
| I'm on my phone so I'll not debug anything right now.
| awinter-py wrote:
| settings are also a great resolution to behind-the-scenes design
| conversations
|
| in particular the classic 'PM wants to incentivize a flow,
| developer thinks it will be annoying as shit and threatens to
| throw phone out the window'
|
| 'let's make this a setting to see if people turn it off' is my
| favorite compromise for these. (Also simplifies phase two of a
| gradual rollout, because jealous early adopters can turn the beta
| setting on manually)
| xg15 wrote:
| I love settings.
|
| I hate _losing_ settings and having to fiddle with everything all
| over again.
|
| I remember, back in pre-windows XP days, me and some of my
| friends would spend ages going through the appearance options and
| customisimg pretty much everything. Even later, I knew of people
| who had a meticulous desktop ordering or spent substantial amount
| of time ordering favourite icons in the browser.
|
| All that was great fun until the first time, the settings were
| lost. Maybe you had to reinstall the OS (or got a new PC) or
| maybe the program updated and simply erased the settings. In any
| case, trying to _redo_ everything you had arranged before looked
| to be an enormous amount of work and not fun at all. So after the
| second time, this happened, we gave up and accepted the standard.
|
| But this eas not because we didn't want customisation, it was
| because the experience was too frustrating.
|
| My impression is that in modern UX, not only do opportunities for
| customisation become less and less, the results are also
| increasingly ephemeral. E.g., there is still no option under
| Windows to save the arrangement of desktop icons - but there is a
| menu shortcut which will instantly rearrange everything and
| render your own arrangement moot. I think this shows a pretty
| clear priority of the designers.
|
| My impression is that customisation opportunities are simply
| conflicting with a lot of priorites of moders software
| _developers_ , much more so than their users: Companies want the
| freedom to frequently change the UI and control overy tiny detail
| about the "experience" - customisation runs directly counter to
| that. In some extreme cases, companies even want the freedom to
| build deliberately _unpleasant_ designs (dark patterns).
|
| Additionally, an inflexible UI also provides more opportunity to
| present some minor improvements as significant new features
| ("twitter now has _three_ different colour schemes! ", "iOS now
| can show _two_ apps at the same time! ").
|
| Last but not least, an inflexible UI lets you actually _sell_
| certain adjustments as a premium feature - e.g. YouTube letting
| you listen to a video in the background.
|
| All of this are strong incentives for software companies to get
| rid of settings, but none of it has to do with users not liking
| settings.
| gknoy wrote:
| It seems like a good reason to have settings be something that
| are _automatically exported / stored_, so that you can put them
| in version control and re-fetch them later, or at least
| export/import.
| [deleted]
| jacobolus wrote:
| Cramming a big pile of "settings" into your program because you
| are unwilling to make choices about how things should work is
| shirking your job as program author/designer, and passing the
| work along to your hapless users.
|
| In many cases something that is a "setting" could be better
| handled some other way. (For one thing, only a trivial proportion
| of users are ever going to actually examine your setting page.)
| You should strive to find another solution first, and only add a
| new setting as a last resort.
|
| This is not to say users shouldn't be allowed to modify the way
| things work. Allowing customization of keyboard shortcuts and
| menu layouts, letting users write or install plugins/extensions,
| including powerful abstractions that can be combined in
| unanticipated ways, etc. can all be very helpful.
| rhn_mk1 wrote:
| > passing the work along to your hapless users.
|
| Is it really fair to your users to presume the are clueless? Is
| it a good idea to take all decisions from them, and rob them of
| the ability to become a designer?
|
| I have a suspicion that this is a self-fulfilling prophecy:
| take away agency, and you'll end up with a demographic which
| never wanted any.
| Nextgrid wrote:
| > rob them of the ability to become a designer?
|
| I mean, that's not a bad idea when it comes to job security.
| themacguffinman wrote:
| Good. If you take away something and users don't care, it
| wasn't important or necessary. Perfection is achieved when
| there's nothing left to take away.
| jacobolus wrote:
| Hapless means unlucky (i.e. suffering due to tragic
| circumstances outside of their control), not clueless
| (ignorant or incompetent).
| mwcampbell wrote:
| > Is it really fair to your users to presume the are
| clueless?
|
| The more charitable interpretation is that we should assume
| they're overloaded; they're using our application because
| they have to get something done, and they need to get it done
| as quickly and easily as possible so they can get on with
| their day. This doesn't always apply; if you're developing an
| application that will be the primary tool for some line of
| work, something that people will live in for hours every day,
| then it makes sense to give them the freedom to make it their
| own. But when developing something that will merely be part
| of someone's workflow, possibly imposed on them without their
| choice, then it makes sense to impose as little as possible
| on them.
| mjw1007 wrote:
| What you're saying is the orthodoxy among designers.
|
| The author of this article is saying they disagree with that
| orthodoxy.
|
| I don't think it's helpful to just repeat the orthodoxy without
| saying more.
|
| In particular I'd be very happy never to see the claim "people
| only add settings because they're shirking their job of making
| a decision" again. I don't think it's true, and I think it's
| impolite to make such a claim without justification.
| aparks517 wrote:
| > In particular I'd be very happy never to see the claim
| "people only add settings because they're shirking their job
| of making a decision" again. I don't think it's true, and I
| think it's impolite to make such a claim without
| justification.
|
| Reading carefully, I don't think OP made this claim exactly.
| I suspect all three of us might agree that there are good
| reasons to add settings and that we should be careful of
| adding them for bad reasons.
|
| I think in many cases a setting gets added not because an
| individual /refused/ to make a decision but rather because no
| individual was /empowered/ to make the decision. I find it
| easy to imagine a meeting (perhaps a meeting with too many
| participants) that gets deadlocked on some question and the
| only apparent way to get out before lunch is to compromise on
| making it a setting. And maybe compromising the design is the
| best way to go, but then that's how it will be.
| drc500free wrote:
| The modern version is to instead have "ML-based
| personalization" that guesses what you want.
| jacobolus wrote:
| > _orthodoxy among designers_
|
| Is it? I see an awful lot of overwhelming pointless
| 'settings' crammed into weird corners all over the place,
| sometimes in ways where the default experience is just broken
| and long-term users just all learn they need to tick the
| appropriate settings to have an acceptable experience. Over
| time the settings proliferate and the settings page just
| becomes a dumping ground. Maybe designers (or project
| managers) need to take this 'design orthodoxy' more
| seriously.
|
| The author's own screenshots show a settings page with like
| 15+ separate pages of miscellaneous settings. Maybe there's
| no other way to solve the design challenges in his app, but I
| doubt it. When he claims that "users love settings [...] just
| look at your own user behaviour," he's projecting his
| personal preference/compulsion for testing and analyzing
| trivial tweaks (maybe as a way to procrastinate from actually
| using the tool? or because thinking about tool design is more
| interesting to him than tool use?) onto other people.
|
| E.g. when he suggests "Some details become annoying because
| they are so repetitive" the easy answer is: just cut those
| out! Why should users have to hunt around obscure corners of
| your tool for a way to eliminate the annoying gimmicks you
| added?
|
| Note that it is entirely possible to have a very flexible,
| powerful set of tools that satisfy a wide variety of niche
| needs while having those tools available to all users in a
| sensible way, without any need to hunt through the "settings"
| page to access them. It just takes a lot of design effort to
| figure out how to break down user goals into parts, abstract
| them, make tools capable of handling those, and then teach
| users how to use them.
|
| But trying to solve tool design problems without the crutch
| of adding extra checkboxes to your settings page doesn't mean
| you have to cripple the software or prevent people from using
| it in their own way.
| adamleithp wrote:
| Side note: linear's website especially the home page, makes my
| iPhone 11 crash when zooming in and out. Firefox Daylight 39.0
| (6519)
|
| Crazy.
| w0mbat wrote:
| When I was an engineer on Microsoft Office, users would often
| request features that the product already had. It was great that
| their problem was quickly fixed (just point them to the right
| setting), but it shows the lack of discoverability that happens
| when the list of settings gets long and you have to dig for them.
| If you can do the right thing automatically and avoid having a
| setting, that is an improvement.
|
| My other observation was that everybody said Office had too many
| features and then asked for two more.
| danShumway wrote:
| The other side of this is that you were getting requests for
| those settings, users wanted to be able to set them. Agreed
| that discoverability was a problem, but behind the
| discoverability, people wanted the ability to define custom
| behaviors or change default behaviors. I think you sum it up
| perfectly with:
|
| > If you can do the right thing automatically
|
| I think a lot of software will shoot for doing the right thing
| automatically when they don't actually know what the right
| thing is. Or they'll remove the options because they think that
| the users don't want settings at all. But users do often want
| all of the behaviors (even the contradictory behaviors) that
| settings enable -- they just also want those settings to be
| discoverable and intuitive, and ideally they don't want to
| think about what they're set to most of the time.
|
| As an analogy, as a user I like automatic high beams in my car
| if they work well. And having an automatic mode that's turned
| on by default might mean that I don't need to spend as much
| time messing with my high-beam brightness, and that's great. In
| a world where they worked perfectly, I might never even need to
| learn how to adjust the beam brightness myself. But I still
| want the behavior of different beam brightness in different
| contexts.
|
| There's a trap designers fall into sometimes where they say,
| "settings are too hard for users, therefore the headlights
| should only have one brightness." If a bunch of users are
| asking you about something, that means they're engaged with and
| care about the functionality they're asking about. It might of
| course indicate that different defaults should be set, or that
| UI should be reorganized. And if you _can_ do the right thing
| automatically, then you might be able to get rid of a lot of
| those support calls by doing that instead. But make sure you
| actually can first, because users are signaling with those
| support calls that they do care about that feature /behavior.
| dschuessler wrote:
| > but it shows the lack of discoverability that happens when
| the list of settings gets long and you have to dig for them.
|
| I wonder to what extent command palettes are the solution. At
| least for me, they are the pinnacle of discoverability. Throw
| the list of all settings and actions into an easily
| discoverable command palette and let the user search for them
| by filtering the list. Make it fuzzy enough to account for
| different formulations of the problem. VSCode does it (mostly)
| right.
| DavidVoid wrote:
| > the lack of discoverability that happens when the list of
| settings gets long and you have to dig for them
|
| Any modern application that has more than 20 settings should
| have a good search function in its settings menu. That way you
| can have as many configurable options as you like without them
| being impossible to find. The defaults should ofc be the most
| common (or best) ones, but some users really do value
| customizability and respecting the users is (almost) always a
| good idea.
| taeric wrote:
| This isn't limited to software. Many don't know that cars
| indicate where this the fuel tank is. Or that seatbelts lock if
| you pull them all the way out.
|
| Really, the list of hidden features on products is such that
| nobody has solved discovery. Affordances that work are ones
| that mimic already learned behaviors. But shared learning is
| not as universal as folks think it is.
|
| Interactive systems that let you ask "what will this do?" Or
| "why did that happen?" Are very good. But even that is hard to
| work with sometimes. Consider how few folks use the apropos
| utility.
| Sohcahtoa82 wrote:
| > Or that seatbelts lock if you pull them all the way out.
|
| My brother-in-law is large enough that when he pulls his
| seatbelt out far enough to actually go around him, it locks,
| and he absolutely hates it.
|
| Is there a reason this "feature" even exists?
| LeifCarrotson wrote:
| I assume he's not a parent? That feature is used every time
| you install a child's carseat.
|
| Edit: Gah! As a Dad myself I am compelled to add that his
| lack of experience with carseats is clearly aparent to me.
| oxfeed65261 wrote:
| This is no longer true, at least since 2003 in the US.
| Car seats are now attached using the far-more-secure
| three-point LATCH system. I never once "used this
| feature" when installing a car seat for my now-twelve-
| year-old.
| mh- wrote:
| yeah, I had no idea this was the purpose behind the
| feature until this thread - my kids are young enough that
| our cars have always had LATCH since they were born.
| bradstewart wrote:
| For what it's worth, whilst my car and carseat have the
| LATCH system, this particular carseat requires use of the
| seat belt instead of the LATCH lower anchors for kids
| over 30 pounds.
| lloeki wrote:
| Attaching baby car seats, you're supposed to reel it out
| all the way which triggers the lock (or rather one-way
| reel) and then reel it in with the guarantee that it won't
| reel out.
| brimble wrote:
| > Or that seatbelts lock if you pull them all the way out.
|
| Haha, I'd think only people who were never in a car as a
| child wouldn't know that. An adult might not mess with them
| enough to suss out that behavior, but kids loooove playing
| with seat belts.
| tshaddox wrote:
| Is there any problem whatsoever about users regularly
| requesting features that the product already has? That doesn't
| seem distinct from customer support helping you understand how
| to use the product, which also doesn't seem like a problem. Of
| course, you could use data about customer service conversations
| to inform design decisions intended to make certain features
| more or less prominent in the UI.
| throwawayboise wrote:
| It's almost axiomatic that "Users don't read instructions," and
| a corrolary is that they don't explore settings pages or read
| the captions and tooltips that may be there.
|
| If the software doesn't do something they want, most users will
| either use it as-is but be somewhat annoyed, or develop a
| (possibly manual) workaround. Most will not explore settings or
| read instructions, so spending a lot of time on
| "discoverability" is probably time better spent elsewhere.
| [deleted]
| jcelerier wrote:
| > but it shows the lack of discoverability that happens when
| the list of settings gets long and you have to dig for them.
|
| how many users is this in proportion of the silent majority
| which has no trouble finding what they want in the menus ? you
| can't base a judgment on complaints alone
| crispyambulance wrote:
| > you can't base a judgment on complaints alone
|
| Nor can you assume that the users who are are NOT complaining
| are happy. They may just be enduring the crappiness until
| they can jump to something that's better.
|
| "Discoverability" is perhaps not exactly the right word here.
|
| Just because something is "there" (SOMEWHERE) doesn't mean
| it's discoverable. The users might have completely different
| vocabulary to describe features that are are present but
| which have an unexpected name. Or they might have a workflow
| in mind that doesn't give a name to what they need, but which
| is nonetheless there.
|
| I think this is hard problem.
|
| With any "complex-enough" tools, one just needs guidance or
| straight-up training. Fusion-360 comes to mind. It's a very
| popular and rather nice CAD tool that has enormous, wide-
| ranging capabilities. Autodesk has a never-ending stream of
| training videos and courses dedicating to showing users how
| to do things with it. Without these, its just too difficult
| for people to "discover" how to use the thing.
| thfuran wrote:
| And you can't presume that a majority of people were able to
| find it rather than just giving up.
| titzer wrote:
| Agreed, which is why user studies are (or should still be)
| a thing. You can't just add telemetry and hope A/B testing
| will surface the real struggles people have with your
| products. Likewise, you can't remove the 1% case of
| "restore backup after critical failure" feature because
| it's used rarely. It'd be like removing seatbelts from cars
| or fire extinguishers from kitchens.
| barnabee wrote:
| I think it's ok that people don't know. Doing better at
| discovery is obviously better but if there is a manual/help
| function that explains all the features... good enough.
|
| Some people want to take the effort to become proficient with
| their tools, others are doomed to wish they had features that
| are right in front of them.
|
| But being less powerful, efficient, and adaptable to keep the
| design clean and simple and make everything discoverable should
| be an anti-pattern for _serious_ apps and tools.
| ako wrote:
| My biggest problem with manual/help is when i don't know how
| to search for what i need. How is it called in the manual?
| You might even arrive at a page that explains it, but you may
| not recognize it. Often manual pages simple explain how to do
| something, without explaining why and when it is relevant.
| Groxx wrote:
| One of my favorite things about OSX are the standardized
| menus... which includes a search field in the "Help" menu.
| Searching for things there will _show you where the menu is_ -
| it 's a wonderful tool for both discovery and future
| optimization. And it's in _every_ application.
|
| I only wish it applied to more places. E.g. it searches help
| _files_ , but they're basically always worthless, and it
| doesn't search non-menu things (settings, in-window toolbars,
| etc). Intellij has a nice cmd-shift-A which does most of this
| ("search everywhere" iirc), and I use it absolutely endlessly.
| Destiner wrote:
| spaetzleesser wrote:
| Reminds me of the search in iOS. I can find an app but it
| doesn't tell me on what page or folder the f...ing app is.
| inglor_cz wrote:
| This works in Windows too, but with one major flaw. If your
| Windows are localized (e.g. Czech), you will have to enter
| the correct name of the setting or service in Czech and
| entering its English name won't help you.
|
| Which is a problem, because the vast majority of
| StackOverflow-like Q&As are in English and mention the
| necessary setting in English, of course.
|
| And you cannot rely on your translational abilities, because
| many of the translations in Windows are stilted.
| nicbou wrote:
| Cmd + Shift + P has the same purpose in Sublime Text. It's a
| really useful feature indeed.
| abdusco wrote:
| Shift+Shift on Jetbrains IDEs. The best search feature by
| far. It fuzzy searches text, symbols, settings, actions, it
| also works with synonyms. No need to fiddle through
| settings.
| hbn wrote:
| This isn't really the point of the discussion, but I've always
| found MS Office features particularly hard to discover because
| even if you Google for it, half the results are for a different
| version that has a totally different UI from your version.
| frosted-flakes wrote:
| Why are you getting results for Office 2003 and earlier? I
| doubt people are still writing stuff for 19-year-old
| software.
| spaetzleesser wrote:
| Same problem in StackOverflow. I always have to check how
| old the answer is.
| drexlspivey wrote:
| Sounds like SO needs a setting to hide old answers
| IshKebab wrote:
| That and the categorisation of tools into the different
| ribbon tabs seems completely arbitrary.
| spicybright wrote:
| Who is saying settings are a design failure? I've never heard of
| that before.
| thfuran wrote:
| Modern ui trends seem to suggest that the answer is "pretty
| much everyone involved in ux/ui design".
| asoneth wrote:
| At least when I was studying (and later teaching) human-
| computer interaction years ago it was a bit more complex than
| this post makes it out to be.
|
| A setting might have been added because the creator
| legitimately couldn't make up their mind about a feature. Or
| because end-users have divergent use-cases, preferences,
| abilities, situations, or hardware. Or because the creator felt
| that the only way to support two different use-cases was to
| make two different interfaces with a settings toggle.
|
| Each setting has an incremental cost in terms of development,
| testing, maintenance, documentation, initial onboarding,
| finding other settings, etc. The best response is to consider
| whether each setting is sufficiently valuable, and whether
| there are any settings that can be eliminated with better
| defaults or more flexible interfaces.
|
| Because many people don't have time to do that, products
| typically end up at one of two extremes. Either they have no
| settings beyond the ones the creator themselves uses, or they
| are the union of every setting anyone has ever asked for.
| intrepidhero wrote:
| Raskin did
| (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Humane_Interface). Good
| book but that was one point I disagreed with.
| mwcampbell wrote:
| Joel Spolsky, for example:
|
| https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2000/04/12/choices/
|
| https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2006/11/21/choices-headaches/
| indymike wrote:
| We're finding that having settings has helped us siphon customers
| from our competition. Love sitting in on sales demos and hearing
| the prospect go, "You let me control that? Thank you!" or "I can
| chose my colors? I love it!" Delighting customers and users...
| that's where you want to be.
| atoav wrote:
| I _love_ settings. It is the first thing I open if I start a new
| program. It tells me about the maturity of the program. Whether
| it is a toy or something really well thought out.
| Graffur wrote:
| I would imagine the overlap between people who love settings
| and people on HN is quite large :)
|
| I also love settings with the exception of web browsers for
| some reason.
| cercatrova wrote:
| I'm gonna stop the author right here:
|
| > First of all, remind yourself that users love settings.
|
| > Despite initially being born out of the absence of airplane
| WiFi, I actually enjoy discovering new settings on my iPhone that
| will make my life easier or improve my productivity.
|
| > Just look at your own user behaviour: What do you do when you
| set up your new computer?
|
| > You change your background image.
|
| > You adjust your mouse speed.
|
| > You set a default browser.
|
| > You make all of those rearrangements not because the operating
| system is badly designed. You make them to create a more
| comfortable environment. To feel more at home.
|
| Because he is a designer, or a somewhat more technical person, he
| may love fiddling with settings, but the vast majority of people
| do not. They do not change their mouse speed, their background
| image, their default browser. That's why a meme exists of people
| thinking the internet is the blue E icon on their desktop.
|
| As a corollary, that is why defaults are so powerful, as
| evidenced in the book Nudge [0]. If you have sensible defaults,
| you can make users do actions that you want them to do, such as
| putting out fresh fruit in a cafeteria closer to the reach of the
| user than junk food which might be farther away, which increased
| the number of people eating fruit.
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nudge_(book)
| wruza wrote:
| Or the number of people eating cheapest junk food.
|
| I wish I could align my springboard icons to the bottom. And
| choose a shiny metal shelf again instead of that acrylic
| bullshit, but that is just my bad taste.
| dachryn wrote:
| people like you are exactly the problem the author is trying to
| address
|
| Sometimes, just sometimes, users want customizability.
| Nextgrid wrote:
| Disagreed.
|
| Non-technical users may not care about settings to begin with,
| partly because defaults work well enough. But there will be a
| point where they'll have to change them, so giving them the
| option is important.
| cercatrova wrote:
| I never said don't give users the option to change settings.
| I'm saying that users generally won't change settings, so
| give them sensible defaults.
| ljm wrote:
| Here I am with my default Ubuntu 20.04 setup (I think) with the
| default hippo wallpaper that looks like a pair of hairy balls.
|
| I'd call myself a power user and to an extent I am (give me a
| deb or a PPA over snap and the app store any day) but tinkering
| is just a pain in the ass now.
| marginalia_nu wrote:
| > Because he is a designer, or a somewhat more technical
| person, he may love fiddling with settings, but the vast
| majority of people do not. They do not change their mouse
| speed, their background image, their default browser. That's
| why a meme exists of people thinking the internet is the blue E
| icon on their desktop.
|
| Just because most users don't use a thing doesn't mean it's not
| a useful thing to have. Even if almost never called the
| emergency services doesn't mean I don't want or need the
| ability to do so. Further, being able to adjust the cursor
| speed is great for improving accessibility.
|
| > If you have sensible defaults, you can make users do actions
| that you want them to do
|
| What about what the users want to do? What entitles you to
| decide what is good for other people? That's just creepy as
| fuck.
| Zak wrote:
| > _What about what the users want to do? What entitles you to
| decide what is good for other people? That 's just creepy as
| fuck. _
|
| It depends. "I want the user to find the useful capabilities
| of my software" isn't creepy at all. That's just good design.
| "I want the user to do things that are against their
| interests but make more money for me" is the core
| characteristic of a dark pattern.
| cercatrova wrote:
| > Just because most users don't use a thing doesn't mean it's
| not a useful thing to have. Even if almost never called the
| emergency services doesn't mean I don't want or need the
| ability to do so. Further, being able to adjust the cursor
| speed is great for improving accessibility.
|
| I never said to remove settings entirely, merely to choose
| sensible defaults.
|
| > What about what the users want to do? What entitles you to
| decide what is good for other people? That's just creepy as
| fuck.
|
| This is a strange comment. It's literally the job of the
| designer to make sure users can do what they need to do in
| the application, I'm not sure how that's "creepy as fuck."
| But also, there's a notion of libertarian paternalism [0], ie
| give people choices but also have defaults that are defaulted
| to the better, healthier, more beneficial option so to speak,
| because the designer would know that most people may not
| change their settings. You wouldn't want your pointer speed
| to be excessively fast, that would just be annoying, so set
| the default at a reasonable level and let people change it.
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nudge_(book)#Libertarian_pa
| ter...
|
| > Sunstein and Thaler state that "the libertarian aspect of
| our strategies lies in the straightforward insistence that,
| in general, people should be free to do what they like-and to
| opt out of undesirable arrangements if they want to do
| so".[18] The paternalistic portion of the term "lies in the
| claim that it is legitimate for choice architects to try to
| influence people's behavior in order to make their lives
| longer, healthier, and better".
| marginalia_nu wrote:
| > If you have sensible defaults, you can make users do
| actions that _you_ want them to do
|
| > It's literally the job of the designer to make sure users
| can do what _they need to do_ in the application,
|
| See, this is two entirely different things.
|
| The notion of attempting to manipulate the behavior of
| people without their knowledge or consent is creepy no
| matter how you twist or turn it.
| cercatrova wrote:
| Design is manipulating people into doing what you want, I
| don't see how you can get away from that. A designer must
| make choices on what they want to user to see and do,
| that's what a default is. Perhaps you're thinking of
| stuff like r/assholedesign?
| marginalia_nu wrote:
| Must it be about manipulating people? Can't it be about
| bringing utility?
| Erdromian wrote:
| You can frame it any way you want, but you are
| manipulating them TO bring utility.
|
| You are making a choice, on their behalf, that influences
| how they experience something without their knowledge or
| explicit consent. Just because you might intend them only
| the best, doesn't change that it is a form of unseen
| manipulation.
| cercatrova wrote:
| What you describe as utility is manipulating people, in a
| sense. You won't design a push door with handles implying
| it be pulled instead, so in a way, you're manipulating a
| user's action to push the door. I think you're assuming
| that manipulating people is used pejoratively, when I'm
| using it to mean "handle or control (a tool, mechanism,
| etc.), typically in a skillful manner," rather than
| "control or influence (a person or situation) cleverly,
| unfairly, or unscrupulously."
| Bjartr wrote:
| When someone sits down to use an app, the app will have
| higher utility if it makes whatever task they're aiming
| to do, easier to do. When designing an app's UI, making
| something easy for users is a matter of understanding
| what their expectations are and matching what they look
| for by default when they try to do a thing in your app
| with what you show them in the UI. That the thing they
| look for is the thing you show them is both the
| manipulation and the thing that raises the utility.
| ovao wrote:
| At a high level, there's good utility in guiding users
| down the path of a curated experience when the designers
| know the weak points of the app, or where some given tool
| has much more general utility than another (in which case
| they might hide the other tool under a context menu or
| something).
|
| It's not necessarily the case that designers guide users
| down paths that solely benefit the designer, and I think
| that approach tends to be seen by most as "bad design".
| In fact, it might even be bad design by definition.
| pessimizer wrote:
| A "nudge" is synonymous with a "dark pattern."
| Bjartr wrote:
| Not really. Dark patterns are a subset of nudges that
| push a user towards doing something they don't actually
| want. Say you have a 'signup or continue as guest' dialog
| with a "signup" button and a "later" button that appears
| when they try to use your app. If a user is seeing it,
| it's because they want to use your app. Highlighting one
| of the buttons is a common way of indicating "this is the
| thing to click to proceed". Highlighting "later" is a
| user-positive nudge, since it nudges those who are on
| autopilot, trying to use your app, to get to using your
| app. Highlighting "signup" is a user-negative nudge, and
| therefore dark pattern, because it gets in the way of the
| user's goal, use your app, purely for the sake of your
| signup rate, since it's optional.
| tacone wrote:
| People don't like to spend time setting up things when they run
| the app the first time, but they also hate not being able to
| tweak things when they need to.
| indymike wrote:
| >I'm gonna stop the author right here:
|
| >> First of all, remind yourself that users love settings.
|
| Maybe this is a better way to explain it: Some users like
| settings, some users have to change settings to use your
| product. But most users will not change them if you pick good
| defaults... for most users.
| avian wrote:
| > he may love fiddling with settings, but the vast majority of
| people do not.
|
| I used to love to fiddle with settings. I gave up because the
| constant churn of modern software made it too tedious to
| maintain non-default settings in most applications.
|
| What use is spending time to make a more comfortable
| environment when the software will randomly auto-update in two
| weeks and might undo all my settings, or worse, change its
| behavior in such a way that my custom settings just make things
| worse.
| mjw1007 wrote:
| Right, I think a lot of people enjoyed customising their
| first computer, and then when they got a new one or
| reinstalled Windows because it got slow they couldn't be
| bothered to do it again.
|
| But maybe things are a bit different nowadays. Web-based
| software might not have this problem so much, and I think
| mainstream mobile OSes do a good job of importing your setup
| when you get a new phone.
| jacobr1 wrote:
| This happened to me early on in programming career. Coming
| out university I had a highly customized emacs environment,
| that I regularly tweaked. But then on my first job, while I
| could use emacs on my workstation, our production systems
| were all Solaris were I could only use vi (not VIM, vi). The
| cognitive load between them killed me and I retrained myself
| on vi. Today I use vim, but really only change a few things
| like the theme.
| wvenable wrote:
| But I wonder if this to the authors point. You used to love
| fiddling with settings (I do as well) but modern software
| continuously makes that less rewarding.
| spaetzleesser wrote:
| I don't think rewarding is the right word. It's still very
| rewarding but modern software decides from time to time to
| undo all your work. Maybe we could say that modern software
| disrespects their users.
| wvenable wrote:
| It becomes less rewarding because of the effort wasted.
| Making the same settings changes over and over is not
| enjoyable. But saying that modern software disrespects
| user settings is a very good way to put it as well.
|
| It should be easier than ever to maintain settings; the
| tooling is so much better now.
| nitwit005 wrote:
| The other reason for settings seems to be turning off things that
| the UI designers insisted on, but which all actual customers
| hate.
|
| See the display density (amount of whitespace) option in
| Salesforce for an example of this.
| TrianguloY wrote:
| Search options for settings. When done correctly, it helps a lot.
|
| For example, in IntelliJ (and other jetbrains products) you can
| open settings and search for almost anything. It will search in
| headers, options, values... And you can quickly find what you
| need, from the hundreds or more settings available.
|
| On the other hand, on Android you can also search, but not only
| takes very long to actually search, it also duplicates entries
| and often never finds what you want.
|
| But I guess the main issue is that the ability to search settings
| requires special base structure that you need to develop from the
| beginning, but when you start programming the number of options
| is small and you don't think about adding search until it's late.
| giaour wrote:
| VS Code is another program that I think does search in settings
| very well. I can't think of a program that isn't an IDE that
| has taken this approach, though.
| rightbyte wrote:
| Firefox on desktop?
| mwcampbell wrote:
| The JAWS screen reader for Windows has had a searchable
| settings UI for several years. I regret that I and possibly
| my coworkers, working on a competing product (before I went
| to Microsoft), used to privately mock that search feature,
| taking it as evidence that JAWS had gone overboard with
| settings.
| iamcurious wrote:
| VLC
| TrianguloY wrote:
| KDE settings also has settings search (also windows more or
| less and other comment mentions mac). An OS is not a program
| but...close.
| mwcampbell wrote:
| I think the author might be concluding too much from a period of
| boredom. Shouldn't we design tools primarily for busy, distracted
| people who have better things to do than mess around with our UI?
| twobitshifter wrote:
| I don't think so, at least not universally. If your app is a
| journal, editor, photo library, or a video player it's not in
| your interest to have the user diving into other programs or
| multitasking. In those cases what they're comfortable with and
| what works best for them is more important. Since you'll come
| back to the program again and again or for deep work, the long
| term payoff can be worth messing around with the ui.
| flenserboy wrote:
| Being able to change settings is fantastic. ResEdit taught me
| that being able to do more than that is even better.
| jrm4 wrote:
| That is is even a _question_ shows how broken this entire field
| is, and is everything I _hate_ about modern software development.
|
| It _really_ should not be the goal of "design" to try to create
| "one experience fits all," because when you do that you create
| the lowest common denominator, the dumbest experience possible.
|
| If you care _at all_ about allowing grownups to do grownup things
| with their software; if you care that people should be allowed to
| push themselves to their own technical and mental limits in order
| to get things done in a good way for them at all, then yes, you
| need to allow for things like "settings."
| overgard wrote:
| One thing that always frustrates me is that most "redesigns"
| end up removing useful settings, or hiding them. Hiding
| complexity doesn't make software less complex to use, it just
| makes it harder to find what you're looking for.
| milliams wrote:
| One of the first things I do when I install a new app or
| programme is open the settings and have a look around.
| newbie789 wrote:
| paxys wrote:
| It's nice to have settings, but you also absolutely need to have
| defaults which work for the vast majority of the user base who
| will never open the settings menu.
| makecheck wrote:
| There is a difference between "the app has a pretty UI to set
| something" and "this setting is configurable".
|
| One of the great things about the Mac is that there is always the
| option to defer certain advanced settings to the `defaults`
| program on the command line (or just things you want to make
| configurable but do not yet have time to extend the GUI). So if
| you _want_ a somewhat-streamlined UI with just a few of the most
| common options, you can do that without completely sacrificing
| the ability to expose the rest somewhere else.
| Sohcahtoa82 wrote:
| One thing the Mac doesn't let me configure, even from the
| command line, is scroll wheel acceleration.
|
| Sure, I can disable pointer acceleration, and I can change the
| overall scroll wheel speed, but I can't disable acceleration. I
| feel most comfortable with 1 scroll click being 3 lines of
| scrolling. It should ALWAYS be that way, no matter how fast I
| move the wheel. If I quickly flick the wheel and do 5 clicks,
| that should be 15 lines of scrolling. If I'm very slowly going
| click....click....click....each click should be 3 lines.
|
| Instead, if I scroll quickly, each click might give 5 lines,
| and if I scroll slowly, each click is a pixel or two, and
| there's no option to disable this awful scroll acceleration
| behavior, even on the command line.
| beardedman wrote:
| > Settings are not a design failure
|
| When have settings ever been considered a design failure?
| satyrnein wrote:
| Most people don't love fiddling with settings. People love when
| software does what they need, and some of them will be willing to
| fiddle with settings if they have to. Settings are a cost the
| user pays (just like data entry, loading times, hard drive space,
| loss of privacy, ads, or the monetary price of the software) in
| order to get the value. If good defaults mean most users don't
| have to muck with settings, great, your software is now more
| valuable. But the only thing worse than having to tweak a setting
| to get your functionality is _not_ being able to get your
| functionality at all.
| dfxm12 wrote:
| _People love when software does what they need, and some of
| them will be willing to fiddle with settings if they have to._
|
| Settings can be well designed or poorly designed though. In a
| way, settings are really part of the design and should be
| thought of as such. If the settings are obvious to find and
| obvious in utility, it's not a matter of willingness to fiddle,
| it's just part of using the software.
| mostlysimilar wrote:
| You may be correct that "most people" don't love settings, but
| I think we underestimate how many power users there are in the
| wild. I personally prefer software to be customizable and give
| me a lot of options to configure and get what I want out of it.
|
| There are a lot of people who are willing to engage with your
| software and use their critical thinking skills in that
| process. I think we're losing something valuable by dumbing
| down all software and all interfaces to the lowest common
| denominator in the pursuit of "no friction" for users. Some
| friction is totally fine.
| nerdponx wrote:
| I find it weird that people think settings are only for power
| users.
|
| Good defaults are very important for non-power-users. But if
| a non-power-user can Google their problem and change a
| setting to fix it, then that's a lot better than said user
| being left with no options at all.
| somehnguy wrote:
| It doesn't even have to add friction. Optimize away for the
| common use case, that's great and benefits the power user
| just as much. Just let people make changes if they really
| feel the need.
| supreme_berry wrote:
| nirvdrum wrote:
| I'm not a designer, but I have done a fair bit with HCI for
| whatever that's worth. I recently read "The Design of Everyday
| Things", which I understood to be a seminal text in the UX
| world. In it, Norman argues that no one-size-fits-all product
| actually fits all and leaving off 1% of the population is still
| a rather large number of people, so in the spirit of human-
| centered designed you should provide options or settings to
| support those people as well. I've been struggling to reconcile
| that with UX of many software products in the time since.
|
| The modern UX ethos seems to be that settings indicate a
| failing of the product and if people don't like the path laid
| out for them, they're either wrong or they can go use something
| else. I think the book also makes the argument that constantly
| breaking workflows isn't very user-friendly either, but SaaS
| products routinely change their UI and workflows around. I
| suppose I can see the business justification for that, but that
| doesn't necessarily make it good UX.
|
| Of course, Norman could just be wrong or my interpretation of
| his text could be wrong. Either way, something feels off to me
| with modern UX. I suppose if you've run actual user studies
| (not just A/B tests), then you have more contextual data than I
| do. But, I came away from reading the book really wishing more
| software products (both SaaS and the recent spat of
| "opinionated" frameworks/tools) followed the principles he
| championed.
| eternalban wrote:
| Haven't read the book but per your comment it occurs that
| assuming the reality of the 'left off 1%', it is possible
| that these are distinct market segments. Did Norman or anyone
| else ever try to correlate demographic aspects with product
| mis-fit? In other words, the disconnect is possibly at the
| market/product level and the same unsatisfied with defaults
| 1% may be perfectly happy with another product that is
| designed for them (thus having few knobs). Not asserting this
| but wonder if this is indeed the case.
| XorNot wrote:
| The other problem is that each thing your decide should
| definitely be "this way and no other" is probably shaving
| off a different 1% of the population.
|
| I maintain that the Ribbon on office is this problem writ
| large: I'm sure Microsoft did a lot of user studies, and
| I'm equally sure that by averaging out all those results
| they managed to prioritise nothing useful to any actual
| business - hence why the product feels bizarrely
| unprofessional these days and is now impossible to
| configure to suit any specific type of writing.
| yccs27 wrote:
| It might be an over-adjustment from the software designers.
| In the early days of software, there was a larger fraction of
| power users, who wanted lots of options and were willing to
| fiddle with them. However, settings were often an excuse for
| not having sensible defaults, auto-detection, context-
| sensibility and other things for a fluid user experience.
|
| Then came a wave of companies focusing on UX with great
| success, who often dropped settings to focus on "magic"
| functions etc. This means UX becomes correlated with less
| settings, but removing options does not help users - on the
| contrary! But unfortunately it gives the impression that
| settings are bad for UX.
| overgard wrote:
| I'm not sure that's true. I usually am far more frustrated when
| something in an OS isn't customizable. One reason I prefer
| Linux and Windows over macOS is because macOS tends to be much
| more rigid in what I can customize.
| eitland wrote:
| > But the only thing worse than having to tweak a setting to
| get your functionality is not being able to get your
| functionality at all.
|
| Exactly.
|
| Don't think about settings as a failure.
|
| Use reasonable defaults and let users override them in a
| reasonable way.
| carlhjerpe wrote:
| I mean it's an issue tracking system not an app for the masses.
| User23 wrote:
| I think this is also an interesting observation for physical
| objects too.
|
| I wouldn't say I like to muck with the settings, but I'd
| consider it a critical design flaw if my desk chair didn't let
| me.
|
| Same with my car's seat, steering wheel, and so on.
|
| It does make one wonder though to what extent automating that
| customization optimally might be possible. It would be cool if
| every time a different driver sat in the car the mirrors, seat,
| wheel, and whatever else automatically adjusted for maximum
| comfort and safety.
| asoneth wrote:
| I like your metaphor. A desk chair with no ability to
| customize is too constrained. One with dozens of dials and
| knobs is far too fiddly, at least for me. There is a happy
| medium with just the right amount of configuration for most
| people.
| simion314 wrote:
| But most of good apps have the Settings split in categories
| and advanced sections, you are not forced to see or touch
| them. It is not like in real world where many options would
| have to mean 100 buttons,switches and levers always
| existing there in your face.
| dfxm12 wrote:
| Who defines maximum comfort? My dad and I are roughly the
| same size, but we have different ideas about how to adjust
| the driver's seat! Some cars let you save seat positions,
| that's definitely the happy medium between starting from
| scratch every time a new driver gets in the car and a very
| expensive automation procedure. Now, I agree, pie in the sky,
| that might be a cool feature to have, but one thing to note
| is that designers have constraints, like time & money!
| Driver's seat adjustments are easy to make and happen
| infrequently compared to most other tasks, so, and this is
| another thing to note it's probably better for all involved
| that the design resources be spent on things that would get
| used more often, like the AC/radio controls, info display,
| etc.
|
| Now, your office chair's only purpose is to be comfortable
| for you. There might be some argument for automating the
| ergonomics (if you can fit it in your budget, of course), but
| then again, is it worth adding all that cost & R&D for a
| feature that will only be used once? Maybe if you're
| targeting a premium market, but likely not. A part of design
| is thinking about these tradeoffs and working within
| constraints...
| hwers wrote:
| I guess what's going on here, the reason people are divided, is
| that on software that you _dislike_ (or are forced to use)
| people generally hate settings and just want the thing to work.
| On software that people _love_ (like a piece of software that
| helps you make music or edit video) then people generally enjoy
| being able to customize it further and further.
| yurishimo wrote:
| Exactly. Look at something like a video game. The
| customization in an MMO needs to be drastically different
| than pong.
|
| Settings are not a binary good/evil.
| larsrc wrote:
| Nope. Two of my favourite pieces of software have very few
| settings because they remember what I do instead of forcing
| me to go and figure out a setting for it.
| funcDropShadow wrote:
| Could you explain that? Software that tries to interpret
| what users are doing and then tries to adapt to itself is
| on a slippery slope. The first steps in that direction,
| like a history of visited sites, or recently edited files
| menu are uncontroversial. But when it moves menu entries
| around to optimize for assumed workflow of the user, that
| user gets infuriated very fast.
|
| Software that I cannot adapt to my needs is like an
| interactive tv. Ultimately I have no control over what is
| happening. Software that I can adapt to my needs puts the
| personal in Personal Computer.
| phil-martin wrote:
| One persons settings are another persons feature.
|
| For example, my kids endlessly change the icons, colours, sound
| and many other visual and functional behaviour of their phones,
| the vast majority of which I would consider 'settings'. But for
| them it's highly important and fun
|
| The defaults are fine for me, but changing those settings isn't
| a cost to them, it's just plain fun.
|
| It's easy to dismiss that as not real work, but I see the same
| in workplaces. Being able to customise your tools to be that
| little bit more bearable can sometimes be the difference
| between having a great day and crappy day at work. A little bit
| of control can feel very empowering.
| supreme_berry wrote:
| dgb23 wrote:
| Fully agreed.
|
| Imagine there were no mouse/controller sensitivity settings for
| example. These and many other settings can have huge impact on
| how usable something is.
| echelon wrote:
| > Most people don't love fiddling with settings.
|
| Passive consumers don't.
|
| Power users, domain experts, creators, engineers, and owners
| love settings.
| Tagbert wrote:
| Having good defaults are a benefit and if done well most people
| don't need to fiddle with settings. For those who are not
| satisfied with the defaults you have chosen, having settings to
| customize things can defuse what would otherwise turn into
| frustration. Even if your defaults are 90% right for 90% of the
| people, they are likely to each have a different 10% that they
| are dissatisfied with.
| sandworm101 wrote:
| >> But the only thing worse than having to tweak a setting to
| get your functionality is not being able to get your
| functionality at all.
|
| Or a setting that once set doesn't stay set. If I arrange the
| settings for something, especially part of a UI, I do not
| expect those setting to go back to defaults every time an
| update happens. Somewhere between functionality and not having
| functionally is only maintaining functionality through constant
| user effort to rebuild settings.
|
| Like the rental car I had that constantly reset the heated
| steering wheel every time I got in. I don't want you to be on.
| I told you I do not want you on. So stop turning yourself on
| every time. THGTTG predicted this frustration decades ago (the
| Nutrimatic drink machine scene).
| Gigachad wrote:
| Settings are like lines of comments or the weight of an
| aeroplane. Less is better but sometimes it can't be avoided. I
| just hate having to configure things though because I always
| lose my configuration when I change device or have to factory
| reset so I'd rather change my expectations to match the
| defaults than to configure something.
| simion314 wrote:
| Nobody forces you to change the defaults, if your IDE has a
| color scheme you don't like you can continue using it, change
| your own preferences then using a menu and a popup to select
| a different color scheme. The thing is some users want to
| change things and some developers are even capable to
| implement things without hard coding various constants. Most
| issues appears when designers (like GNOME ones) want to
| impose a brand or vision.
|
| Good apps will store configuration in a folder/file and they
| offer import/export functionality. As a person with eye sight
| problems I would be unable to do my job if a shit designer
| could force is shitty font sizes and colors on my apps(for
| some reason slim fonts with light gray on white background is
| sexy in recent years)
|
| TL:DR nobody forces you to open the settings panel, keep the
| defaults and don't try to demand or defend removing stuff you
| personally don't need, you don't understand how other
| work(use the applications)
| larsrc wrote:
| All too often, especially in the open source world,
| settings are used as a way to not figure out how to make a
| good default. When the default is crap, I am forced to go
| to the settings and spend way too much time finding my way
| around a gazillion possibilities.
| simion314 wrote:
| >All too often, especially in the open source world,
| settings are used as a way to not figure out how to make
| a good default. When the default is crap, I am forced to
| go to the settings and spend way too much time finding my
| way around a gazillion possibilities.
|
| IS there any evidence for this? Like what should be the
| default font or font size? Is there evidence that there
| is such a good default? The problem is you want that the
| good defaults match your preferences without proof that
| those defaults are good, Sure there are exceptions where
| evil or big ego people will force their preference over
| what the users want.
|
| Do you play video games? , if yes don't you think that
| sometimes you need to adjust the sound volume, font
| sizes, difficulty to match you?
|
| Do you listen to radio ? Isn't great you can adjust the
| volume or change the station?
|
| Do you use and IDE ? isn't great that you can change the
| color scheme, the code formatting scheme, the keyboard
| shortcuts, that you can install plugins to add more
| features to help you with your work?
|
| True story, I installed for my son an emulator and
| installed a game he wanted to play, after a few hours I
| ask about the game and he tells me that the controller
| buttons were weird/reversed but he got used to that. I
| then went in the menus and found the setting where he
| could have change those buttons so he do not have to
| suffer and rewire his muscle memory, the conclusion is we
| need to teach people to not be afraid to think "this
| software should work differently, let me check for a
| setting instead of torturing myself".
|
| P.S was not the emulator program fault, it could not have
| a default that worked for all game and controller
| combinations.
| Gigachad wrote:
| I'm not advocating for _no_ settings. I'm saying a
| limited selection of settings are useful, putting just
| about everything behind a setting like many FOSS programs
| do is bad. Accessibility is the biggest one where people
| have certain strict needs which go against the usual.
| Font size is an example of this accessibility
| requirement.
|
| I don't like settings for UI, there usually is one
| correct or best UI. I don't want to see settings to
| configure the drop shadow amount. I use an iPhone because
| its generally just exactly what I want. And in the few
| cases it isn't there is a setting for it or its not
| actually important and I deal with it. Moving from
| android I was upset there wasn't a setting to have the
| keyboard use the vibration motor rather than a click
| sound but after a week I didn't care at all and I'm glad
| there aren't 2 billion settings to make iOS work like
| Android.
|
| I leave my IDE theme on the default, my wallpaper on the
| default, ringtone on the default. None of it actually
| matters for getting work done and living life.
| Gigachad wrote:
| >Most issues appears when designers (like GNOME ones) want
| to impose a brand or vision.
|
| Gnome is by far my favorite DE on linux because its the
| only one I feel that actually cares about the best out of
| box experience. I can install any linux distro and pick
| gnome and it all just works. And it just works really well.
| While everything else seems to take a significant amount of
| tweaking to create a nice experience. So I think Gnome is
| the perfect example of why stripping back configuration
| works. I like the choice available to pick my DE and OS,
| but after that I want it to just work.
|
| Another issue I have noticed is the more settings a piece
| of software has, the less stable and consistent it is. You
| get issues which only occur when particular settings are
| set because the devs just haven't used that setting in so
| long they didn't see the issue. I had some where just
| setting up volume change keys required configuring keyboard
| shortcuts to fire bash commands to adjust volume..
|
| I prefer to use software where the designers and developers
| are bold and put forward their vision on what the right way
| is. If they are right, I use the software, if they are
| wrong, I find an alternative that is right. I think
| LibreOffice is the biggest example of devs held hostage by
| the community unable to do anything. They have like 4
| different UIs available which you can pick from in the
| settings. Their modern redesign isn't even the default
| setting. So I prefer something like Google Docs where they
| have one UI and feel empowered to change it to fit the best
| possible design.
| simion314 wrote:
| >I prefer to use software where the designers and
| developers are bold and put forward their vision on what
| the right way is
|
| This is stupid, why do games let you configure the
| controls? Is it because the developers are not bold to
| impose the right way and force the people into it? Are
| the people changing the controls "using it wrong"?
|
| I assume you mean themes, there is no right way there,
| there are people that need larger contrast, larger fonts,
| different colors so give them the option. So if you are
| forced by accessibility reasons to offer diffent sizes
| and colors(even iPhones offer this) then IMO you are a
| bad developer/designer to hardcode your theme and your
| are an ashole if you do extra work to prevent teeming by
| the community.
|
| If you mean missing functionality as a feature , most of
| the time is because other reasons, like GNOME missing
| file picker thumbnails and their fake defense of it like
| "you are using it wrong, just DND the files because this
| is the right way"
| spaetzleesser wrote:
| Good default settings are great but please let me tweak. I
| don't like UIs where i can search only for 1-5, 6-20, 21 and
| more. Why not allow me to search for 10-12? Sometimes I feel a
| lot of modern software has authoritarian tendencies "we know
| better than you what you need".
| jagged-chisel wrote:
| I'm on the fence about intent. It could easily be a team that
| wishes to limit the inputs to something "manageable."
| kristopolous wrote:
| It's a valley culture.
|
| The structure of the team gets reproduced in the product.
| Read the soul of a new machine for a great example.
|
| There is an unhealthy elitest hierarchy at many companies
| which manifests itself as interfaces to users on the
| assumption they're totally incompetent idiots. It's a
| reproduction of an insular culture.
|
| The worst part is that it's reinforcing. The thing you've
| probably heard of is the Stanford prison study but there's
| many similar ones; essentially you set up a context for how
| you engage with your customer and the customer plays the
| roles dictated by the context.
|
| So you treat users like idiots and then they start acting
| like idiots. It really does work that way.
|
| Let me give an intuitive analogy for those unconvinced. We're
| going to use a gym, library, and bar. Surely the same person
| would be exercising, studying, and drinking at those
| institutions, in that order.
|
| We shape the buildings (create the context); thereafter they
| shape us.
|
| The core problem of UX is the extreme focus of what kind of
| user they want as opposed to what kind of context they want
| to facilitate. The latter is how sustainability, growth, and
| value happen.
| rubidium wrote:
| The biggest thing with settings pages is stop redesigning them.
| If I've figured it out once I don't want to have to again!
| lbebber wrote:
| Yes but the decision to redesign something might be towards
| people who haven't figured it out, which if they are a large
| enough fraction might be worth the tradeoff.
|
| (there are other reasons too of course, sometimes not really
| good ones)
| smegsicle wrote:
| and then there's the mswindows strategy of never redesigning
| settings pages, but designing entirely new settings pages that
| sort-of integrate with the old ones
| emn13 wrote:
| ...but only expose some of the settings, forcing users to go
| digging through the archeological pit that are older settings
| interfaces, because windows somehow things the settings they
| themselves added previously are pointless.
|
| Then, ideally, spend a decade or more to partially and
| inconsistently replace just a few settings but not all,
| because somehow that makes sense, and at least that way users
| are encouraged to each go on their own little archeological
| dig?
|
| Best of all, the new settings look prettier, but aren't
| always anymore usable, so it's not even really an upgrade.
| Ekaros wrote:
| Also some things are inherently complex. And there might
| not be good way to make them simple or pretty... I mostly
| find need to mess with network stuff on Windows and either
| way isn't exactly great...
| scrozier wrote:
| This article, and many of the comments here, commits a central
| mistake: declaring things to be true with no evidence. "Users
| love settings." Umm, prove it. Even more glaring, the author goes
| on to use his own anecdotal story to make his point. If there's
| one thing I've learned in decades in software development (and
| there's not), it's that my opinion is not a satisfactory proxy
| for "what everyone thinks/does."
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| The author is correct, but it's sad that he had to say that.
|
| I am not thrilled with "inviolate rules of thumb," as a general
| principle.
|
| Don't get me wrong. I have been doing what I do for a very long
| time, and have developed a huge library of habits, practices, and
| heuristics, in my work.
|
| It's just that I treat them as _guidelines_ , as opposed to "Thou
| Shalt Not" commandments. If an old or obscure pattern fits the
| bill for what I am doing now, I use it. If the problem looks, but
| is not exactly, like an issue that I have solved in the past, I
| will see if I can adjust the old solution to fit today's
| conundrum; even if the old solution is in a "Thou Shalt Not"
| area. If a current _buzzword du jour_ is nonsensical in my work,
| I don 't use it; no matter how good it looks on my CV.
|
| Basically, because of my experience, I am allowed to color
| outside the lines.
|
| A lot of times, I need to look at what others have done, and, if
| I am not an expert in their field, I have a lot less flexibility
| in what I can do.
|
| For example, in the app I'm developing, the core functionality is
| pretty much done, and it's time to start gussying it up, putting
| some lipstick on the porker, theming it, what-have-you.
|
| I was originally trained as an artist, but that was a long time
| ago, and my stuff tended to have a rather "prime color" palette.
| Think "Magpie on LSD."
|
| I don't trust my own design sense, when it comes to a palette. I
| need to look at what others have done. I won't be able to deviate
| much, as I don't have their design sense.
| bhauer wrote:
| I am surprised by the settings skepticism in this thread. By
| insisting that preferences/settings are indeed a design failure,
| many here are missing out on relatively easy user delight wins. I
| think there is an illusory adversarial relationship between good
| defaults and having user-configurable settings.
|
| Having the ability to configure settings does not need to, and
| indeed should not, supersede having good defaults. Windows
| Explorer has the _ability_ to hide file extensions, but that
| should not be the default.
|
| Instead of removing settings, some design tactics I've found
| useful in building software:
|
| 1. Provide multiple default settings profiles. E.g., beginner,
| advanced, and expert. The problem with a single, rigid
| configuration is that you can't satisfy all user types. On the
| other hand, acknowledging that not every user wants to fiddle
| with settings, providing a quick way to more closely match their
| needs via multiple default profiles is a win.
|
| 2. Always provide settings import and export, or some form of
| settings synchronization between instances. One of the main
| reasons users don't use settings is that they are exhausted by
| having to re-apply all of their preferences every time they
| install your app. I've installed Firefox about a hundred times
| across many computers. If I had to manually adjust it to my
| preferences, re-install and configure add-ons, and so on, I'd
| just give up and use more of the defaults. The idea of having to
| re-train NoScript alone is unbearable.
|
| 3. Provide better descriptions of what settings do and why they
| are offered. This can be inline help within the settings dialog
| or "show me" buttons, or whatever. A good example you're probably
| familiar with are video game options panels that say things like,
| "Enabling this may help increase framerate in the following
| circumstances: ..." Firefox is similarly pretty good about this.
| But many apps don't give the user much explanation for settings,
| adopting a more "if you know, you know" attitude. Don't assume
| that because your user is a "layperson" that they can't
| understand what your app's settings do if you take the time to
| explain them.
| stormking wrote:
| I love settings, browsing the settings screen gives me a feeling
| about how mighty a software is. Software without settings is
| usually very shallow, only supporting a handful of usecases. But
| in the modern SaaS world, they still want to charge 5 bucks per
| month. No thanks.
| draw_down wrote:
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