This content was published by Andrew Tomazos and written by several hundred members of the former Internet Knowledge Base project.

Dealing with Preferences

Your latest greatest application has 120+ user-configurable options. Fantastic! But how do you present these options in a usable, structured way?

In my opinion the point is not how you present 120 options, but how you reduce them to the 20 essential options. Every customization nerd will soon find out they can live with a slightly different way of entering data or a not-their-favourite-color (black) window background they have accustomed to, IF the application provides essential functionality. 120 prefs options equals complexity, complexity equals frustration, frustration equals time lost, time lost equals less productivity. And (coming back to the time management perspective) if you're using something as difficult as a computer and losing time while doing it, why bother?

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