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> 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.

> 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_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".

> 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.

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?

Must it be about manipulating people? Can't it be about bringing utility?

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.

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.

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."

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.

A "nudge" is synonymous with a "dark pattern."

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.

>If a user is seeing it, it's because they want to use your app.

It could be because they want to try your app. It implies nothing about long-term goals.

>Highlighting "later" is a user-positive nudge

The label "later" is itself a dark pattern. It's forcing a user who only wants to try the app to lie, which exploits the principle of consistency (as documented in Cialdini's "Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion") to manipulate them into continuing to use the app.

> It could be because they want to try your app. It implies nothing about long-term goals.

How does "use" imply long term? Is trying an app not at attempt to make use of it?

> It's forcing a user who only wants to try the app to lie

I didn't even notice that as I wrote it, but you're absolutely right. "skip", "continue", or even "not now" would be more neutral. This stuff really gets in your head without you realizing it when its so pervasive.

> Design is manipulating people into doing what you want

I completely disagree. What I want is irrelevant. What matters is what I think the user wants. I present them with information and choices, they tell me what to do. There is never a step where I hold any opinion over what the user should do. Only steps where I help them understand the consequences of their available actions.

> There is never a step where I hold any opinion over what the user should do.

What do you mean "never"? If you've put one button on top of the other, you've just created a hierachy. You are telling the user that button is more important than the lower button.

Have you ever hidden elements until it can be revealed by click on "more" button? That's you telling the user it isn't as important as unhidden elements.

Have you made defaults? That's you nudging the user into what _you_ think is the sensible choice.

In my opinion, design is fundamentally about having an opinion. A refined opinion that matches a lot of users is what is commonly deemed to be "good design", but obviously not a design never match all users.

> What I want is irrelevant. What matters is what I think the user wants.

What you think the user want is still what you want. But I think I get what you mean here, you don't like the anti-patterns and nudges that drive users to do what is "worse" for them. I agree with you there but I would argue that they are all still "design". Design is about manipulating people and whether you do it for good or bad is a moral choice.

> If you've put one button on top of the other, you've just created a hierachy. You are telling the user that button is more important than the lower button.

> Have you ever hidden elements until it can be revealed by click on "more" button? That's you telling the user it isn't as important as unhidden elements.

> Have you made defaults? That's you nudging the user into what _you_ think is the sensible choice.

> In my opinion, design is fundamentally about having an opinion. A refined opinion that matches a lot of users is what is commonly deemed to be "good design", but obviously not a design never match all users.

I think we're on the same page here or close to it. I can have lots of strong opinions about how best to inform the user about their options and what will happen if they choose them. I can have strong opinions about which options are best for accomplishing certain goals. But that's different from me trying to get the user to do something specific or wanting them to. Or even having an opinion about what they "should" do, that depends on their goals and circumstances.

> Design is about manipulating people and whether you do it for good or bad is a moral choice.

I still disagree about this. I would agree if you're creating art, an experience that is meant to be fictional. But if you're providing a tool or resource, then I think design is about informing people about their choices and empowering them to make them. So it should strive to be as far from opinionated or manipulative about those choices as possible.

> I think design is about informing people about their choices and empowering them to make them.

I think we are pretty much are on the same page here too. I agree that design _ought_ to be about informing people. It looks like our definition of 'design' and 'manipulation' vary slightly, which lead to our disagreement.

- Your definition of design is a narrower than mine. (yours include the normative element whereas mine doesnt)

- I've used the word 'manipulation' in a neutral way but it was a negative one for you. (e.g. The engineer manipulated the control panel vs she manipulated him into giving him all this money)

In any case, I'll think more about your definition of design. If more designers used your definition, I think the world would be a better place!

> 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.

> 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

>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.

> 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.

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.

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".

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.

people like you are exactly the problem the author is trying to address

Sometimes, just sometimes, users want customizability.

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.

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.