A friend and I just discovered a simple yet incredibly useful feature in Google Maps for iPhone… The one-hand zoom. To perform a one-hand zoom simply double tap on your map and, after the second tap, leave your finger pressed. You can then move your finger up and down to zoom in/ zoom out.
This works on my Nexus Android too, by the way.
Building a great product that just works should be priority number one and once you begin to understand what settings might be tweaked, should you then start to think about adding a settings panel.
Users assume you are giving them the settings that are best for them right off the bat. If you aren’t, then they might view your product as a failure.
People choose not on the basis of what’s most important, but on what’s easiest to evaluate.
The best products don’t focus on features, they focus on clarity. Problems should be fixed through simple solutions, something you don’t have to configure, maintain, control. The perfect solution needs to be so simple and transparent you forget it’s even there.
If you do anything that’s too different, even if it’s different in a good way, you’re going to start pulling users out of flow and they will start thinking about the product instead of thinking what they’re doing.
