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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

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) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nudge_(book)

wruza 5y ago
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.
avian 5y ago
> 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 5y ago
  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 5y ago
  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 5y ago
  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 5y ago
    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 5y ago
      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.
Nextgrid 5y ago
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 5y ago
  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.
marginalia_nu 5y ago
> 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.
- cercatrova 5y ago
  > 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_paternalism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nudge_(book)#Libertarian_pater... > 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".
tacone 5y ago
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.
ljm 5y ago
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.
- _2paq 5y ago
  Enjoy using a music player which doesn't have volume control and a file picker which doesn't have thumbnails. I guess you feel that you don't need those features because "tinkering is just a pain in the ass now".
  - ljm 5y ago
    I don't really use either of those because I'm: a) on my work machine and therefore not going to store my music library on it b) on my work machine and therefore spending most of my time between a terminal, my text editor, Slack, and a web browser Not sure how my lack of motivation to tinker would be a problem for anyone else, really.
dachryn 5y ago
people like you are exactly the problem the author is trying to address Sometimes, just sometimes, users want customizability.
indymike 5y ago
>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.
ozim 5y ago
Defaults should be good enough I agree, but ability to change settings still should be there. Some settings are even more important than others - like changing default browser in the operating system - that even if no one ever changes them they should be there basically by law.
CRConrad 5y ago
> he may love fiddling with settings, but the vast majority of people do not. Funny how often this gets repeated. Usually (as here) with a conspicuous lack of supporting data. > 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. Could just as well be -- and, I think, is -- the other way around: It's not that they're ignorant because they don't change their settings, but that they don't change their settings because they're ignorant. Maybe most (or even all) of them would want to change their mouse speed, background image, and default browser, if only they knew there are settings to do it. Removing the settings wouldn't exactly help with that -- on the contrary, the solution would be to make them more obvious.

wruza 5y ago

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.

avian 5y ago

> 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 5y ago
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 5y ago
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 5y ago
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 5y ago
  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 5y ago
    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.

Nextgrid 5y ago

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 5y ago
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.

marginalia_nu 5y ago

> 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.

cercatrova 5y ago
> 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_paternalism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nudge_(book)#Libertarian_pater... > 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".

tacone 5y ago

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.

ljm 5y ago

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.

_2paq 5y ago
Enjoy using a music player which doesn't have volume control and a file picker which doesn't have thumbnails. I guess you feel that you don't need those features because "tinkering is just a pain in the ass now".
- ljm 5y ago
  I don't really use either of those because I'm: a) on my work machine and therefore not going to store my music library on it b) on my work machine and therefore spending most of my time between a terminal, my text editor, Slack, and a web browser Not sure how my lack of motivation to tinker would be a problem for anyone else, really.

dachryn 5y ago

people like you are exactly the problem the author is trying to address Sometimes, just sometimes, users want customizability.

indymike 5y ago

>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.

ozim 5y ago

Defaults should be good enough I agree, but ability to change settings still should be there. Some settings are even more important than others - like changing default browser in the operating system - that even if no one ever changes them they should be there basically by law.

CRConrad 5y ago

> he may love fiddling with settings, but the vast majority of people do not. Funny how often this gets repeated. Usually (as here) with a conspicuous lack of supporting data. > 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. Could just as well be -- and, I think, is -- the other way around: It's not that they're ignorant because they don't change their settings, but that they don't change their settings because they're ignorant. Maybe most (or even all) of them would want to change their mouse speed, background image, and default browser, if only they knew there are settings to do it. Removing the settings wouldn't exactly help with that -- on the contrary, the solution would be to make them more obvious.