# Account and settings

## Open the account area in one modal

<!-- rule: modal -->

**Rule:** Open account and settings in one modal over the product, with its navigation beside the pane.

**Why:** The reader has not left the work behind it, and one overlay holds every setting.

**Do:** Open a panel over the work, navigation beside the pane.

**Don't:** Slide a full-width sheet in with columns inside it.

**Except:** On a phone the navigation stands above the pane, where a column beside it would leave the pane narrower than its rows.

**Gap #553:** The kit has no modal that takes a navigation pane or a width, so this shape is built by hand.

## Give the modal its own navigation

<!-- rule: nav -->

**Rule:** Give the modal one entry per group a reader arrives to change.

**Why:** A reader already knows which group they came for, and a list of names is read faster than every group in turn.

**Do:** Stand the entries beside the pane — above it on a phone — and mark the one on screen.

**Don't:** Run all five groups down one scroll.

**Except:** Merge two groups when neither fills a pane alone.

## Limit the account menu to identity and the way in

<!-- rule: menu -->

**Rule:** Keep the account menu to the reader, the row that opens the modal, and Sign out.

**Why:** A setting answered inside a menu has no address to link, search or come back to.

**Do:** Name the reader, then the way in and the way out.

**Don't:** Answer the settings in the menu, a row per setting.

## Change a single field where it sits

<!-- rule: in-row -->

**Rule:** Change a single field in the row that names it, with no overlay.

**Why:** Opening the account area to flip one switch costs two presses back to the row.

**Do:** Flip the weekly digest where it is named.

**Don't:** Open the modal on a pane to flip one switch.

**Except:** A question that must be answered before anything else still stops the page.

## Name the action after its change

<!-- rule: one-action -->

**Rule:** Name an account pane’s action after the change it makes.

**Why:** On a pane of agents and the tokens they hold, Save does not say what the press changes.

**Do:** End the tokens pane with “Create token”.

**Don't:** End the same pane with “Save”.

**Except:** A pane whose choices apply as they are made carries no action.