Triggers and barriers to customizing software
Wendy E. Mackay · 1991
One of the properties of a user interface is that it both guides and constrains the patterns of interaction between the user and the software application.Application software is increasingly designed to be "customizable" by the end user, providing specific mechanisms by which users may specify individual preferences about the software and how they will interact with it over multiple sessions.Users may thus encode and preserve their preferred patterns of use.These customizations, together with choices about which applications to use, make up the unique "softswue environment" for each individual.While it is theoretically possible for each user to carefully evaluate and optimize each possible customization option, this study suggests that most people do not.In facfi since time spent customizing is time spent not working, many people do not take advantage of the customization features at all.I studied the customization behaviorof51 users of a Unix software environment, over a period of four months.This paper describes the process by which users decide to customize and examines the factors that irdluence when and how users make those decisions.These findings have implications for both the design of software and the integration of new software into an organization.