"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.
[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.
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.
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).
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.
For example, what should the default volume setting be? (Warning before you answer: if you don't pick the volume I want right now, it'll be annoying!) Okay, what should the default mouse speed be? (Just so you know, I might be 20y.o. with a gaming mouse or 80y.o. with a trackball.) Etc.
We're improving though. Volume settings are an unnecessary annoyance in a great deal of apps already and you won't need to tweak it in many apps that pick good standard defaults for notification sounds, mic volume, etc. It's grating when apps pick bad default volumes and it immediately assaults our ears. Unfortunately, users sometimes still have to tweak a global/system volume setting, but hey, things aren't perfect and it's good to have a fallback when software fails.
Two people may indeed have different preferences, but that's no excuse to force users to configure a bunch of knobs and switches themselves. Good design adapts to the user. When it doesn't, then settings cleans up after the failure.
This is sadly true, but I really wish it wasn't. There's no way to automatically determine the correct volume without privacy violating brain scanning.
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.