Do Users Prefer Fewer Preferences?

Havoc Pennington wrote an essay in April 2002 which touched on the problems caused by user preferences in software. Beyond issues they cause with testing, code complexity, and inevitably bugs, they also impact usability. Maybe what users want is fewer options? Restaurants discovered this years ago: consumers prefer smaller menus. (See also: The Paradox of Choice by Barry Schwartz). Personally, the first thing I do after downloading any new software is configure the preferences, and there’s a part of me that’s always a little disappointed if there aren’t a lot of options to go through.

People are suffering from decision fatigue. The average person makes 35,000 decisions in a day. The weight of having to make yet one more decision, like what to make for dinner or what to watch on TV, just feels like too much. Sure, user preferences aren’t something you probably deal with on a daily basis, but it’s possible users want more decisions made for them in general.

Consider also opinionated vs nonopinionated software design. For some users and some applications, an opinionated design makes sense. My tax preparation software is very opinionated in most of its design elements. When you login, it automatically directs you to the next step in filing your current year taxes, or if you’ve already filed it brings you to the status of your return. Sure, some small subset of users will be logging in for other reasons (to view prior year’s returns, for example), but the vast majority of users just want to pick up where they left off or check the status of their return. Conversely, something like Microsoft Excel is very nonopinionated in its design. You’re expected a build a spreadsheet in Excel according to your needs. The framework and the tools are provided, but it’s up to you to decide how to use them.