I am developing two interfaces for my product that will allow users to customize a booking widget that they place on their sites. One is for choosing colors for the widget elements. The other for is designing the form their customers will fill in.
My mindset is users prefer ease of use over customisability. I have debated this but some people on the team say just let them change whatever they want.
For the color picking I want to offer preset themes and have limited if any custom choices.
For the form builder, the app needs name and email. I want to make that immutable and not even movable. I don't think name and email should be anywhere but on the top. For my customer's customers' sakes. Like this:
Again, there is debate in the team that they should be able to do whatever they want. I can't imagine why name should be the last form field on the list but maybe I am not imaginative enough
So... Maximum permissiveness or UX team knows best?
Anyone have any experience where they have offered too much? Or offered limited choices only to have users wanting more?
Answer
The problem with maximum permissiveness, as you point out, is that users can then do things which are really poor, and that will, to an extent, reflect back on you.
As a rule, letting user customise is a really good thing to do, however, this is not users, this is clients. There is a difference, because a user will make things the way they are happy with FOR THEMSELVES, whereas a client will do this for all users. The chances are that their style will not be suitable for all of the users.
Providing a set of templates that are broadly OK from a UX perspective should give the clients a sense of flexibility, but ensure that the users have something usable. Win win, IMO.
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