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PatternCraft conventionIntermediate

Settings and Preferences

Group by the question people are trying to answer, decide one convention for saving, and treat defaults as the real design.

Definition

Settings expose the choices a product allows. They accumulate faster than any other surface, and they are usually organised around the system's objects rather than around what the reader is trying to change.

Craft convention. True because the industry converged on it. Breaking it costs familiarity, not correctness.

On this page
  1. Definition
  2. Structuring them
  3. Behaviour
  4. In practice
  5. Continue from here

Structuring them

  1. 1

    Group by intent

    People look for the outcome they want to change, not for the entity that stores it. 'Who can see my work' beats 'Workspace object permissions'.

  2. 2

    Separate scopes visibly

    Personal preference, workspace policy and billing are three different kinds of setting with three different audiences. Mixing them causes the wrong person to change the wrong thing.

  3. 3

    Pick one saving convention

    Either every control applies immediately, or the page has an explicit save. Mixing both in one interface means nobody can predict whether a change took.

  4. 4

    Add search past about twenty items

    Beyond that, the structure stops being memorable even when it is correct.

Behaviour

Do

  • Confirm immediate changes with a brief status message, announced to assistive technology.
  • Show the effective value when a workspace policy overrides a personal preference, and say who set it.
  • Keep destructive account actions in their own area, visually separated.
  • Write each label as the outcome, with help text for the consequence.

Do not

  • Do not use a toggle for a setting that needs a save step. A toggle promises immediacy.
  • Do not hide a setting's dependency: a notification channel that is off globally makes every per-event switch meaningless.
  • Do not ship a default nobody argued about. It will be the value most people keep.

In practice

Effective value beats a stale toggle

In a workspace where an admin has disabled external sharing, showing a personal 'sharing' switch as on is a lie. Showing it as off, disabled, with 'Turned off for this workspace by your admin' explains the state and names the route to change it.

Continue from here

Each link says what the connection is, so you can tell a principle from an alternative from a thing people mix this up with.

Principles behind this

The reasoning this solution is an application of.

Depends on

Get these right first, or this one will not hold.

Often used with

These usually appear in the same screen or the same decision.

Check your work

Review passes that test whether this was done properly.