During a meeting today, a single sentence made by the meeting leader filled me with inspiration to write todays post.

“Our goal is to offer our customers with a complex and customizable system that they can use any way they please.”

Now, there is nothing wrong with offering the user the ability to customize a system to meet their specific needs, or to give them a degree of control over their experience. A problem arises though when you offer so much customization that you allow the user to make the system overly complex and confusing. Which leads me to a golden rule I like to follow, if a user can make something overly complex they will.

When you offer the user the ability to customize anything and everything you don’t give them a clear direction on how to accomplish their goals. They are offered a virtual swiss army knife with hundreds of attachments, when all the user needs is a spoon. It’s important as the designer or product manager to understand what the goal of the user is and offer ways to streamline their work flow via customization. Show the user exactly how to accomplish the task they want to perform and provide them with a structured system that fully supports the task.

It is my view that user customization is a tool used by advanced intermediate users and power users. These users will use the the customization options to makes their jobs easier, and as designers we are empowering the user to take responsibility over their experience. Basic and standard intermediate users will unlikely ever take full advantage of all the options, and need a clean and structure process to follow to accomplish their daily goals. In the end, it is a balancing act between offering the user a flexible, structured environment and not over constraining the user by overbearing business rules and complex processes.