Best practice to include developer's area inside user's account options

Question

In this concept, normal users see an option for "signing up as developer" then they would receive access to developer's options. the normal way I assume is like this:

But I think of some innovations. These two ways came in my mind:

1) After signing up as a developer via the link at the bottom of the user's normal account links (same as in the top image); Hereinafter user will see two big tab buttons to choose the desired section:

2) From the first showing a link to developer's area beneath a page flipping effect where user could both sign up and use options (Or maybe put the sign up option for developing at the bottom of left links such as the first image, I don't know).

Which one do you suggest and why? Do you know any better concept?

Thanks

Answer 1

I agree with number one. Number two makes me feel it's a one time thing. I mean you click on developer's area and you activate something. But in fact it depends on how often this section is used by user. If it's used less, maybe the first one (with no innovations) is more suitable.

Answer 2

I think the size of the UX changes should reflect their scope. If the developer option is something like "now you can change the background color!", then the "normal way" is totally fine, as it's not a big change.

• Option 1 makes sense if the "Developer's area" is totally separate from "Profile options", and has a similarly scope for changes. This seems unlikely, though; since most users get the option to sign up as a developer, it's probably a per-user option, and those are all put under "Profile options". Renaming it to something like "User settings" might make the original scheme more palatable.

• Option 2 depends on what kind of options are available. Personally, I think the turned-down-corner effect needs to go, as it's only useful for feature discovery, but detrimental for long-term usability (ignores context, making it intrusive and ever-present).

Coming up with better concepts depends on the content that you want to present with this. For example, if developer options are a rarely-used thing, where the developer has to dive in once in a while to fix a mess, I'd embed the options in each page that needs them, and color them bright neon so they don't leak into production code.

Answer 3

The first option is better because it makes very clear that there is a very clear developer option that the user can see. Furthermore, when a user activates the developer option, they most certainly want to use it. Further, with the big button to switch between the two modes, the user can effortlessly switch between the two modes without going through the hassle of finding a hidden function on the page --something that option 2 does.

More specifically why I do not like the second option is because it hides the developer option, which makes it very unclear to the user as to whether or not there is even a developer option in the first place. The only time a user will find a developer action is if the accidentally stumble upon it or you tell them that it is located there -- both of which are hallmarks of bad design. Furthermore, in this mode the user has to memorize where the roll up is when they want to switch to the dev option. Even if the user memorizes this fact it is still a hassle because the developer button is "cleverly" hidden, meaning that the user has to put in a lot of effort just to switch between modes.