Preferences: Hiding Interface Complexity

UI Design Fundamentals

Interfaces with few controls tend to look friendly and make for great screenshots. For instance, take this picture of Microsoft Windows XP’s “Taskbar and Start Menu” Control Panel:

Think it looks reasonably easy to use? Oh, but you haven’t clicked on that “Customize…” button yet, or the “Start Menu” tab. Let’s try “flattening” this Control Panel by taking all those additional windows, which are hidden behind these tabs and buttons, and putting them in the one place. It’s a little like envisioning the interface as an analog gadget from the 1940’s, where every little widget is like a switch on the front of the device.

Looks a little more daunting now, doesn’t it?

Learning how to use a so-called “UI preferences” interface like this one—which could take quite some time—essentially allows the end-user to configure the way their computer’s functionality is accessed.

But who, aside from an aspiring user interface designer, would ever actually want to do that? Wouldn’t it be better if computer software just worked great from the start, without the need for someone to configure it so it didn’t annoy the heck out of them?

And how is someone supposed to learn how to use their computer if using it is completely dependent on the way it happens to be configured? I can only imagine how much technical support personnel must despise this kind of functionality when it comes time for them to help customers over the phone—I know I do whenever I’m helping my parents use their computer.

Designing user interfaces is hard for a reason. When I’m creating one, I need to take the time to figure out how to give my users just one easy and quick way to do something, not burden them with a dozen half-baked solutions and force them to pick one. Sure, preferences are a necessity sometimes–but they should be treated as a last resort, not a way of life.

When it comes down to it, I’m reminded of a certain bad habit from my youth whenever I see preferences interfaces like the one above; it’s as if an interface designer had a whole bunch of ideas, didn’t know what to do with them, and stuffed them into a closet. Little does the unsuspecting Windows user know that they’ll be buried in options when they open the closet door.