\u201cI am consumer, hear me roar!\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
That\u2019s a thing I actually wrote once, un-ironically, in a text conversation with a friend. I was looking for a product that would allow me to perform a particular task in a particular way.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Unsatisfied with the options I\u2019d found so far, I kept looking. My friend suggested using one of the products I had already decided to ignore, and just do things their way.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
To hell with that. I\u2019m the customer. I\u2019m the guy with the money they want. I might only be one customer, but my money\u2019s just as good as anyone else\u2019s. Why shouldn\u2019t I spend it on a product that does things the way I want to do them?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Some users look for the cheapest deal in terms of money. Others look for the cheapest deal in terms of time and mental effort.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Some users look for the cheapest deal in terms of money. Others look for the cheapest deal in terms of time and mental effort. This is why app makers build options and settings into their apps. They know not everyone does things the same way, so limiting their possible options limits their possible customers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Web apps and sites are catching on to this idea, too, and I\u2019m here to share some of the more common (and important) ways to let your users customize their own experience.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I know I\u2019ve addressed this before, but it\u2019s still happening. So I\u2019ll keep talking about it. I\u2019m not saying every single site has to be multi-lingual. Some sites don\u2019t need it, and proper localization can get quite expensive. I\u2019m saying that if your site has multiple languages, you really need to let the user pick the language they want to use.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
That sounds like common sense, but I keep running into sites where the language is chosen for me based on my location, and they won\u2019t let me change it. I live in Mexico, and my first language is English. You can probably see the problem. But it\u2019s not just edge cases like me. What about people using VPNs located in other countries? What about people traveling on vacation?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
There\u2019s no reason not to let your users set their language manually.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
If your site requires (or even just encourages) its users to do a lot of reading there, then you should consider giving them at least one light theme, and one dark. I myself prefer to read with a light theme, and the room lights on. But others seem to get tired reading like that. They especially seem to like having a dark theme when reading in the dark, as it keeps the screen itself from nearly blinding them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I know. This sounds a lot like I\u2019m recommending that you maintain two separate versions of your site. Just note two things: One, most sites don\u2019t require nearly enough reading that this sort of option would be necessary. Two, if you plan ahead, you could theoretically change all of the colors on your site with a few lines of CSS. That\u2019s the beauty of the cascade.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So if you\u2019re looking at information in a table these days, it\u2019s pretty reasonable to expect to be able to sort the information you\u2019re looking at in various ways: alphabetically, numerically, by category, or what-have-you. You can apply pretty much the same approach to any other type of content, though.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Blogs have long been designed so that you could quickly filter out content you were less interested in, by employing tags, categories, and more. Social media sites have completely failed in this regard by increasingly trying to phase out reverse-chronological timelines, and even removing content from our view with algorithms. Listen, developers, just because I don\u2019t interact with a bit of content doesn\u2019t mean I don\u2019t want to see it. I\u2019m a lazy goddamn interactor, and I look at a lot of content. Stop hiding it from me!<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I for one am always glad when a socially-oriented site offers to let me decide exactly how much information I want to let everyone see. Required information (such as my e-mail address) is not always information I want to hand out to just anyone. I mean, if anyone wants to find out too much information about me, I\u2019ve already given it all to Google and Facebook, but why make it too easy?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Equally important to privacy features are the ones that allow me to decide exactly how social I want to be. Being able to block individual users is a good start, but what if platforms that have private messaging allowed us to simply turn it off?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Perhaps it seems contrary to the entire concept of the social web to allow people to limit the social features on their accounts. But there are many sites I use that have social features that I personally have no use for. And until they all get Gmail\u2019s spam filtering technology, we might be better off without some of them altogether.<\/p>\n\n\n\n