Design Details

364: How to Design Better Settings

Episode Summary

This week, we deep dive into tips and strategies for building a better settings experience in your product. In The Sidebar, we discuss the efficacy of paginating onboarding screens.

Episode Notes

This week, we deep dive into tips and strategies for building a better settings experience in your product. In The Sidebar, we discuss the efficacy of paginating onboarding screens.

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The Sidebar:

The Sidebar is an exclusive weekly segment for our Patreon supporters. You can subscribe starting at $1 per month for access to full episodes going forward! Sign up at https://patreon.com/designdetails.

In this week's Sidebar, we talk about the efficacy of paginated onboarding screens, and suggest alternative onboarding patterns that we've learned about through experience.

Follow up:

Main Topic:

This week's listener question comes from Priscilla Then, who asks:

  1. What's the difference between "Settings", "Configuration", and "System" (would it be appropriate to have all 3)?
  2. How should "Settings" be used?
  3. Should Settings be displayed visually "apart" from the rest of the first-level navigation options, like how Shopify does it (putting all things in the left sidebar from the top, but the settings at the bottom)?
  4. What do you think of companies that have multiple, tiered settings (like Zoom)? Do you think that they executed it well?

Cool Things:

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Goodbye!