I find myself needing to answer questions for users sometimes and to provide instructions. Having an absolute path with the username (eg https://domain.tld/u/YOUR_USERNAME/preferences/account
) for user preferences has become burdensome since I have to provide unique instructions each time and general FAQs are not really possible without sending screenshots on how to click to places.
It would be so much easier if we simply allowed users to go to: https://domain.tld/preferences/account
or https://domain.tld/account/preferences
Currently when you need to explain to a user how to get to their preferences, you tell them:
- Go to user icon in the upper right beside the 3 horizontal lines (most users don’t know what a hamburger icon or such is).
- Click on your username that’s in the upper left of that upper right menu/popdown.
- Click on the 2nd item up from the bottom that says “Preferences” and has a gear to the left.
I think it’s pretty clear that it would be both easier for admins and users if we had a simplified URL path so that we could give general URLs that would work for all users to get to their preferences.
I wouldn’t even mind if there’s a /u
in there as well. I just simply believe we need to make a simpler URL path available as a usability improvement for everyone.