Retain Good Defaults

Despite the benefits of customization, experience shows that many users don’t avail themselves of customization features. Users exhibit a strong bias toward simply getting things done while visiting a website as opposed to spending time fiddling with preference settings.

It’s too easy to resolve a design debate by simply offering all the possible options and letting users decide their preferred user interface for themselves. Often, it’s better for users if the design team decides on a single good, coherent user experience. Customization options should be reserved for those features that offer substantial benefits to users to compensate them for the time spent on the overhead of dealing with the customization UI instead of the task domain.