Reader small image

You're reading from  101 UX Principles – 2nd edition - Second Edition

Product typeBook
Published inMay 2022
PublisherPackt
ISBN-139781803234885
Edition2nd Edition
Right arrow
Author (1)
Will Grant
Will Grant
author image
Will Grant

Will Grant is a British UI/UX expert and a digital product designer. He is a web technology entrepreneur with over 25 years' experience, leading teams (and products) at the intersection of technology and usability. After his Computer Science degree, Will trained with Jakob Nielsen and Bruce Tognazzini at the Nielsen Norman Group – the world leaders in usable design. Since then, Will has overseen the user experience and interaction design of several large-scale web sites and apps, reaching over a billion users in the process. Will is a "design purist" and obsessed with building beautiful, compelling, and familiar products that customers intuitively know how to use.
Read more about Will Grant

Right arrow

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...
lock icon
The rest of the page is locked
Previous PageNext Page
You have been reading a chapter from
101 UX Principles – 2nd edition - Second Edition
Published in: May 2022Publisher: PacktISBN-13: 9781803234885

Author (1)

author image
Will Grant

Will Grant is a British UI/UX expert and a digital product designer. He is a web technology entrepreneur with over 25 years' experience, leading teams (and products) at the intersection of technology and usability. After his Computer Science degree, Will trained with Jakob Nielsen and Bruce Tognazzini at the Nielsen Norman Group – the world leaders in usable design. Since then, Will has overseen the user experience and interaction design of several large-scale web sites and apps, reaching over a billion users in the process. Will is a "design purist" and obsessed with building beautiful, compelling, and familiar products that customers intuitively know how to use.
Read more about Will Grant