Design problem

Confusing settings

Settings have grown by accretion. Nobody can predict which page a given option lives on.

How you know you have it

1Group settings by the question they answer, and name them in the reader's words.
2Pick one convention for saving, and make deferred saves visibly deferred.
3Separate destructive and account-level actions from everyday preferences.
4Add search across settings once the list passes about twenty items.

People look for the outcome they want, not for the entity that stores it.

Immediate for some controls, deferred for others, with no visual difference between them.

Defaults carry more weight than any label, and they are usually set once and never reviewed.

Settings problems are architecture and defaults problems, so the reasoning entries deal with both before the components appear.

The mechanism underneath the symptom. Read these when the fix needs justifying to somebody else.

Default Effect
Most people accept whatever is preselected, which makes defaults the most powerful control in an interface.
Cognitive biasEstablished research
Recognition Over Recall
Recognising something on screen is far easier than remembering it, so keep the information visible.
HeuristicExpert heuristic
Match Between System and the Real World
Use the words, concepts and order that your users already have, not the ones your database has.
HeuristicExpert heuristic
Hick's Law
Decision time grows logarithmically with the number of equally likely choices, so the tenth option costs far less than the second.
LawEstablished research
Status Quo Bias
People prefer things to stay as they are, which is why every redesign starts with a deficit.
Cognitive biasEstablished research
User Control and Freedom
Users make mistakes and change their minds, so every state needs a clearly marked way out.
HeuristicExpert heuristic

The visual and structural levers that produce or relieve this problem.

Common Region
A shared boundary or background binds elements together more strongly than proximity does.
UI foundationEstablished research
Proximity
Things placed close together are read as belonging together, before anything is read.
UI foundationEstablished research
Visual Hierarchy
The order in which elements are noticed, controlled by size, weight, colour, position and space.
UI foundationCraft convention
Density
How much information occupies a given area, which should follow the user's expertise and task rather than a house style.
UI foundationCraft convention

Recognised solutions, with the conditions under which each earns its place.

Progressive Disclosure
Show the common case first and reveal the rest on request, so complexity is available without being present.
PrincipleExpert heuristic
Search
The escape hatch from navigation, and often the primary path for users who know what they want.
PatternCraft convention
Confirmation
An interruption that should be reserved for genuinely irreversible actions, because it stops being read when it is routine.
PatternExpert heuristic
Destructive Actions
Actions that remove or destroy, which need separation in space, distinct styling and a recovery path.
PatternExpert heuristic

States, behaviour and the accessibility contract you will need to specify.

Toggle Switch
An immediate on or off setting, which must actually take effect immediately.
ComponentCraft convention
Select
Choosing one option from a known set, which is the wrong control below about five options.
ComponentCraft convention
Checkbox
Independent on or off choices, where the label is part of the target.
ComponentCraft convention
Tabs
Parallel views in one space, which works only when users never need to compare across them.
ComponentCraft convention

Where the words carry more of the fix than the layout does.

Microcopy
The small pieces of text that do most of the work: labels, hints, empty states, errors and confirmations.
UX writingCraft convention
Content Design
Deciding what content a user needs and in what order, which is a design activity rather than a writing one.
UX writingCraft convention

The requirements this problem raises, mapped to the decisions that produce them.

Labels and Instructions
Every input needs a persistent label, and format requirements must be stated before the user types.
AccessibilityCraft convention
Status Messages and Live Regions
Telling assistive technology that something changed, when focus did not move to say so.
AccessibilityCraft convention
Keyboard Navigation
Everything must be operable with a keyboard alone, which is the single most load-bearing accessibility requirement.
AccessibilityCraft convention

Methods suited to confirming the cause before you commit to a fix.

Card Sorting
Asking users to group content, which reveals their mental model of a domain rather than your org chart.
Research methodEstablished research
Tree Testing
Testing whether people can find things in a structure, with no visual design to confound the result.
Research methodEstablished research

Interactive review passes, with progress saved in your browser.

SaaS Product Checklist
Accounts, teams, permissions, billing and the surfaces every SaaS product needs and few design well.
ChecklistCraft convention
Design Ethics Checklist
Whether the design serves the user's interest, including where that now overlaps with legal obligation.
ChecklistCraft convention

Worked cases, including the options that were rejected.

Reducing Notification Volume Without Losing Signal
Every team that added a feature added a notification, and users responded by turning all of them off.
Case studyCraft convention

The same material, organised around the surface you are building rather than the symptom you are fixing.