The Power of Defaults, Especially in Software
March 30, 2011I recently read Nudge, a book that covered some really interesting cases of how people can be affected simply by the way a choice is presented to them.
In the case of software, this is a tremendous issue. How many people use the default theme in Chrome or Firefox? How many people have the grass background in Windows?
Those are certainly mundane examples that matter very little to a user, but there are certainly other cases where the default does change their experience. Take signing up for a newsletter, for example. Or getting notified when there are additional comments on a blog post. Those choices will greatly affect a user’s experience with that piece of software.
Much of Nudge discusses giving people the option to control their environment and what they want should they want to make an explicit choice. Otherwise, give them a default that will most likely work best for them and educate them about the possibilities out there and what’s available.
For software, do you make your default something that will make your company money right now? Or money in the long term? Or promote customer retention and recommendations?
Ultimately, those are business decisions. Though, personally, I think it’s always clear that those last goals go hand-in-hand.
