101 UX Principles

Chapter #92. 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, the default sound output of my phone switches from handset to in-car speaker. I can change it, but the default is sensible.
• Sign in to an analytics product and the selected date range is "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.

  Picking a good default is a balance of factors:

• How many users you ...