There is no doubt that choosing among different options is time consuming and requires effort. Whether it is about managing our finances, buying complex products, making a donation, or just buying ice cream, making decision is hard. Luckily, there are ways to simplify decisions. One of those is when we find a “default” option. Indeed, defaults are powerful tools that can help people to take faster decisions. In this post, we briefly look at what default options are and how product managers and designers can use the power of defaults to improve user experience of a product.
When default options help
If you have ever chosen among different offerings of a product, you might have felt overwhelmed. Comparing different product options, each with its own price and benefits, may result in a headache. Now let us consider a story that happened to me a while ago. You enter an ice-cream shop you have have never visited before. You see a large selection of inviting flavors and you wonder what to choose. Suddenly, you notice that the shop attendant has already placed a scoop of chocolate in your cone. She asks you a simple question: “Would you like to keep the chocolate or have a different flavor?”. What would you do? It probably depends on how much you like the shop owner. But, most likely, you would not change flavor and stay with chocolate, the “default” option.
If you are not much into ice-cream, let us look at another case that you most likely came across. What was the last time you searched for directions using a route mapping app like Google Maps? Probably not long ago. If that’s the case, you have experienced the power of defaults. Indeed, as soon as you request directions to a destination a bunch of results show up on the map. But the one you suddenly notice is the “fastest route to destination”, which happens to be the default option. Most likely that’s the option you end up using to reach your destination.
In decision-making science, defaults are pre-set courses of action that take effect if the decision maker specifies nothing. Noble Prize winner Richard Thaler and his co-author Cass Sunstein talk about defaults in their bestselling book “Nudge”, whose final edition just came out in 2021. Before looking at the power of default options in product user experience, let us get a better definition of “default”.
Defaults as nudges
Defaults influence our choices as consumers. They are ubiquitous and powerful, because they represent the path of least resistance in a decision. Not all defaults are equal, though. In general, if defaults are designed to improve outcomes of consumers (or decision-makers in general), they are considered “nudges”.
Indeed, to help consumers or citizen to make the right decisions, companies and public institutions should use not just general “default” options, but defaults should be “nudges” as well. So, what are “nudges”, by the way?
Nudges are interventions to get people acting in their own best interest.
For a full and exhaustive explanation of “nudges”, I would really recommend to read Thaler’s and Sunstein’s book. But what does it mean for a default to be a nudge? In a nutshell, a nudge should respect three fundamental ethical principles:
1) It should be transparent and not deceptive.
2) It should not be forceful, but it should offer a way to opt-out.
3) The nudge should be, as much as possible, in the best interest of who is taking the decision.
At this point you may wonder why we care to know if a default is a nudge. Simply, when defaults are used as nudges, they provide with added value to the people who face a decision. If these people happen to be customers or users of our product, we are basically increasing customer value!
Why defaults are powerful
Now that we have looked at defaults as a way to nudge people (or customers) towards better decisions, let us look at why defaults are so powerful. The following list is not exhaustive, but gives just an idea of why default options are powerful in product user experience.
Easier decisions
Defaults are important because they provide our minds with shortcuts. According to what psychologist and nobel prize winner Daniel Kahneman tells us in “Thinking, Fast and Slow”, two systems govern our decision-making. They are called “system 1″ and “system 2“. Contrary to System 2, which is reflective and ponderous, System 1 is automatic and immediate. We usually take many decisions, such as commuting to work or choosing ice cream, using system 1. This is because system 1 takes us little or no energy. So, by offering a default, we can help decision makers to use system 1 more than system 2, so that the decision can be faster and easier.
Better outcomes
Another reason why default options improve product user experience has to do with how they improve the expected decision outcome. To clarify this, let us put ourselves in the shoes of a consumer or decision-maker in general.
Indeed, beyond choosing an ice-cream flavor, there are other choices where picking the right option may separate success from loss. This is when we would normally make the effort of triggering Kahneman’s System 2. The decision may be complex enough to require domain knowledge and proper analysis. In this case, if the expected benefits do not balance out the cost, a default option can speed up the decision process. At the same time, we can expect a better outcome compared to the outcome we would have by taking just a random decision.
For example, if we acquire a new software application for our business, we may find a vendor that offers different product configurations. Each configuration has its own set of features and price. But we may realize that we do not have enough knowledge to choose. To make a perfect decision, we would need to spend time with a lengthy process. First, we would need to acquire the knowledge. Second, we would evaluate every feature for each product option, and translate it into the benefits for us. Finally, we would subtract the cost to acquire the option, and finally choose the best option.
However, if during the purchasing process the software vendor presented us with a default option, things would change. We could offset the time-consuming process by choosing just that option and be ok with the expected outcome. Of course, this presumes that we trust that the vendor’s suggestion, whichever it is, is in the best interest of customers rather than just its own.
More choices
For a consumer, having a few options is better than having just a single option. Indeed, we all like to choose because it gives us a sense of freedom. However, more options is not always better. Experiments show that, when consumers have too many options, they tend to purchase less. Yes indeed. Although more choices increase freedom of choosing, they also require more effort when it comes to take a decision. Such effort may even lead to anxiety, regret and even self-blame when the choice does not work out. Therefore, one way to reduce the effort without necessarily reducing the number of options, is to use a default option. In this way, decision makers can choose if they are ok with the default or prefer to go with the decision making process.
Impact on society
A less obvious reason why defaults are so powerful is that they can literally make the world a better place. Indeed, recent studies show that making green energy the default option leads to a larger shift to renewables and a larger reduction of CO2 emissions.
Defaults can also save lives. Indeed, different European countries have different opt-in policies when it comes to organ donation. Some countries presume consent to organ-donation, meaning that a person needs to explicitly disagree in order to opt-out. Other countries, instead, require explicit consent in order to opt-in. The result of such a difference is striking. Research shows that countries with presumed consent have above 90% of respondents in favor of donation. On the other hand, countries requiring explicit consent have lower than 30% of respondents agreeing to donate organs.
It is amazing how a little tweak can make such a big difference. However, there is an “illusion” (that’s how Thaler and Sunstein call it in their book). In fact, despite of its agreement rate, presumed consent does not get people choosing explicitly for donations. This means that governments do not know if people really had a preference and took the decision mindfully. In order to protect the interests of potential donors and their families, governments do not take presumed consent as a final “yes”. So, in countries where donation consent is implicit, doctors consult with donors’ families before removing organs. In this way, the potential donor’s family can, when the time for the donation arrives, still decide against the donation. Therefore, proper communication with potential donors and their families are key to make the outcome fair for both donors and recipients.
Applying defaults in products
By now, we know that, if used properly, defaults improve both individual and societal outcomes. Now it is time to see how providing users with default options can improve product user experience.
Thus, with defaults, product teams can strongly influence customers’ decisions and contribute to simplifying the product itself.
Showing search results
Searching among many options on a website may be overwhelming. Think for example to an e-commerce website. Usually a search engine helps users to find what they need. However, depending on how accurate the search is, the number of results may still be overwhelming. So, product designers often face a dilemma. Should they give users the full freedom to browse among the options or should they nudge them with defaults. In my experience, there are a couple of ways to use defaults when showing search results.
A first way consists of having the product to show directly a default option, so that the user can immediately continue with that option without further due. This presumes that the user is expected to have a strong preference for that option. For example, the ride sharing service Lyft shows a default fare that users can see immediately after the search (see image below), so that they can proceed with booking the ride without actively selecting any result. In this case, the main advantage for users is that they can secure the ride quickly without too many clicks. Indeed, this approach fits particularly with cases where options differ according to just one or two criteria (for example, cost and time to ride).
The second way to return search results effectively by using a default option is to use a default search criterion rather than a default result. In practice, instead of preselecting a search result, the application shows results ordered by a default-sorting criterion, like recency, relevance, cost, number of ratings or some other criterion. This approach suits more when the user has time and interest in browsing among search results. For example, many e-ecommerce businesses allow users to search and then browse among results by using price as default criterion.
Requesting acceptance of terms
Another frequent application of defaults is in disclosing a product’s terms on an electronic form. Imagine a person is registering to a product. Accepting terms of use is mandatory to proceed the registration process. In one version, the user simply needs to check a box in order to accept terms of use and continue with the process. By default, this case does not require the user to actively read terms in order to proceed. In the second version, the user needs to actively visit the terms page in order to continue the process. Which of the two version is better than the other? It depends.
If a product is simple and does not involve any major risk for the user, accepting terms may just be a formal act that can be up to the user’s discretion. On the other hand, the more complex the product, or the more health/financial risks the product may cause, the more important it is for the user to read terms. Practically, while forcing users to read terms is difficult to achieve with paper forms, with web forms there are more possibilities to guide a user’s navigation and awareness. Some virtuous insurance companies, for example, not only make terms understandable, but also check that the user has visited the terms page and has even spent enough time to visit the relevant pieces of information. Although we can argue that this paternalistic approach can annoy users, proper design and communication can well increase users’ trust in the product. Most scooter-sharing companies, for example, use additional guided onboarding steps in order to inform the user about the importance of wearing a helmet and the risks of misbehaving on the streets. The aim is not to just tick legal boxes, but most importantly to make the user safer and aware.
Configuring the settings
Another typical application of defaults in products regards the configuration of settings. When products are properly designed, they initially address one or a handful of use cases. With time, they grow into addressing different use cases and even customer needs. Marketing too many product versions, each for every customer need, becomes too costly for marketers. Thus, the ball goes to product designers that need to make products suitable for a broader set of customers without negatively affecting user experience. In this case, defaults allow users to start using the product straight away, while having the possibility to configure it by themselves.
Take enterprise resource planning (ERP) software, for example. Given the breath of scope and the details of the features, regardless of their specific industry, ERPs usually offer many configuration possibilities. Thus, product managers and designers use default settings to give users a piece of software that can work straight away without requiring configuration. The user can always configure it later. Having standard settings for a product is so important that a group of decision scientists have put together a decision tree to help choosing the right architecture when defining a standard version of a product.
Surely there are many more examples of defaults applied to product management. In fact, we have not even touched the impact of default options in product pricing. If you sell online, you know how important is to have a default product and how it makes a difference to your profitability.
What next
If you have read so far, you know why default options can improve the user experience of a product. Now you may wonder how to practically define choice architecture for a product. Unfortunately, or maybe luckily, I have not found a single recipe that can work for every product. I think this has to do with the fact that proper choice architecture is tight to a product’s business domain. However, good product design is an essential ingredient to provide a successful choice architecture. Don Norman, a famous cognitive scientist with focus on design, in his capstone book “The Design of Everyday Things”, shows and analyzes what distinguishes good design from bad design. Norman’s main observation, in my opinion, stems from the fact that humans make thousands of actions every day, while products are supposed to do just one or few things very well. Therefore, when humans fail at using a product, it is usually not their fault, but the product’s fault to consider user experience.