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Comment by nfw2 | Hacker News Reader

I don't think there is some absolute law of design* that says all users must be supported. If a startup is still struggling to reach profitability, they generally will invest all their efforts into supporting one niche really well, not create universally useful products.

*There are actual laws that say those without disability must be supported, and I think companies should strive to meet those, but that's more of a moral argument

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The point or question I was raising was specifically about UX. Design, which includes UX, isn't done in a vacuum. There's many competing interests and environmental considerations that ultimately influence a product. Norman spends a good deal of time reinforcing that idea, I think mostly to drive home the point that reality doesn't match the platonic ideal. That's what I was alluding when I said "I suppose I can see the business justification for that."

Carving out a niche when getting started is probably quite prudent. But, that doesn't mean it's a good user experience. There's a lot of retorts in this comment section about how any amount of settings is tantamount to total design failure. I think that's too reductive and I'm trying to reconcile that research on the topic.

It seems weird to talk about something as "good user experience" or "bad user experience" in a universal sense without a specific use case in mind. Something can be a good experience for one set of users and a poor experience for others.

Settings allow you to customize a software beyond its developer-intended path, while that doesn't take away from the "default" path, it maximizes the total amount of good experience. That's how it's universal.

The customization process becomes part of the UX though. That doesn't automatically make it good.

My objection was to the view that supporting only 99% of users is "bad" in some absolute way. Obviously 100% is better than 99%, but good and bad are relative, and 99% might be good enough when considering the actual needs of the product that's being developed.

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