Please make user settings easier for users to find

[anon23840344]

I’ve been experimenting with Discourse for two weeks, and I’ve always struggled to find the user settings page until just now.

Apparently I’m supposed to click my photo (in the upper-right corner), then click the small “person” button next to my name, and then I’m shown a menu of choices: summary, activity…preferences.

Before this, for the last two weeks, I was madly clicking around and navigating backward and resorting to browser history.

I previously had gotten to user settings accidentally by clicking my photo, then the downward pointing caret at the bottom of the dropdown window (which I see now is supposed to indicate “more”?), then clicking preferences on the next page that loads.

In my administrator account, I see a settings button after one click of the hamburger button. But not in my plain user account.

I’m a tech-oriented person, a software engineer, and a visual designer. And I’m the administrator of my Discourse app. If it took me this long to learn the logic of this layout, I anticipate very few of my non-techie staff will ever learn it on their own.

Please, I beg you, make this interface more intuitive and less layered. Please put a settings link for all users in the nav next to search, hamburger, and photo. Or put it under just one click of hamburger or photo. Reduce it from three clicks to one or two.

Can I modify this location as admin?

Thank you.

[awesomerobot (Kris)]

I don’t think user preferences are something that is so frequently accessed that a dedicated header button is needed, but I do think that it’s hard to know that the username opens another menu (and knowing is half the battle). We’ve also had a couple complaints about finding the log out button from time to time.

I suspect the problem is that these icons on the right are all the same size and distributed equally, and when one is pre-selected as a tab… it’s easier to understand they are tabs.

The username on the far left doesn’t share that benefit, without some interaction there’s little reason for me to think it’s anything but my static username…

An additional menu item would make it easier to find (the addition of the cog on the right)…

…and I’m not sure how critical it is to see your own username here (not at all useful for me), so I’d even go as far to do something like this…

Then the links under it could be…

Summary
Activity
Drafts
Preferences
Log out

(We already have a dedicated messages tab, so I don’t know why we’re duplicating that under the existing menu)

Curious if others have thoughts on this…

[anon23840344]

Excellent analysis, thank you. I like your suggestion.

At first I clicked hamburger and expected everything to be there. After pouring through that menu, I stabbed at my photo and found it was another menu. And then I saw only three tabs: bell, bookmark, mail. It was probably only by accidental hover of my name on the left two weeks later that I realized it was a fourth tab.

Removing the name or making it not an interaction element, and pushing the person icon to the right with the other tabs, would make more visual sense.

[riking (Kane York)]

Note that you’ve accidentally turned the assign tab into the user information tab. Whoops, no, you were talking about “what goes under the settings cog tab”, sorry.

[codinghorror (Jeff Atwood)]

I think this is a great idea and we should make it so!

[awesomerobot (Kris)]

This is live on Meta and you’ll see the change on your site with the next update

[Terrapop]

It’s great now, @awesomerobot

Love it

[anon23840344]

Much better, thank you. And amazingly quickly done.

[Benjamin_D (Benjamin Decotte)]

At fist glance, without thinking, it took me a minute to cycle trough everything and finally but wait! that wasn’t like that before…!

I’m very happy about this change, my users (not tech savvy at all) never really got used to the link on the username (or at least I had to explain it quite a few times), now I think I might be able to skip this part of the welcome process, it’s more intuitive and coherent that way

And now there is more room for some others tabs

[p3040029]

Great result! Thanks