The team I work in are in charge of approving and creating new team document storage/collaboration microsites for business areas within the company. These are currently being offered as SharePoint sites.
Just about every time we get a request for a new SharePoint site that they then instantly want to customise (seemingly before they even consider what they want the site for, or what kind of documents they are going to store/collaborate on).
We could simply say no but I was wondering if that was making more work in the long run. Would it be easier to permit a limited (and ultimately with low real UX impact) range of customisation options that might fulfil this need?
So prevalant is this request that I was wondering if there were studies that had examined this seeming compulsion to customise (the psychological need to 'stamp my mark'?)
And also whether anyone had any advice on what might be permitted (would allowing a personalised image or a border colour change satisfy the 'urges')?
(NB - My boss' preference is to 'Just say no' but I am wondering whether users might have an improved experience and maybe even administer their site better if they were allowed a little customisation to make the site feel more theirs - but still within clear company branding guidelines.)