Preferences/Settings should be minimized

Allowing a user to change how an application works by only going into preferences/settings should be avoided.

• Most users won't even look there so features will be underused which is a waste of development resources.
• Try to prompt the user to change their preference when they do a related action. i.e. if there is a preference for the number of items to show on a page and the user changes the dropdown to show a different number of items on the page then ask the user if they would like to update the preference to the new value.
• When prompting the user, avoid making the user click an extra time. Instead of doing a popup, just add text that prompts the user.