Pick Good Defaults
The power of default settings is often overlooked, but they have huge potential to affect the UX of your product. Some examples of great defaults:
- When I get into my car, my phone detects that it’s connected to a Bluetooth vehicle and the sound output switches from headset to car—a great default behavior.
- When signing in to an analytics product with a selected date range of “this week,” with a comparison date range of “last week.” Imagine if the default was “today” and showed no data—useless, right?
- When I tap a name in my “recent calls” view, my phone calls that person, rather than starting a new text message or video call. Those options are tucked away in a context menu, if I need them.
Picking a good default is a balance of factors:
- How many users you think (or know through research) want this default setting
- How difficult it is for the...
