Your defaults are decisions, not settings
Most people stick with whatever you preselect, so choose defaults as if you were choosing for them.
Every preselected option you ship is a decision you’re making on behalf of most users. The classic example is organ donation. In Eric Johnson and Daniel Goldstein’s 2003 data, consent rates were in the high nineties in countries where you’re a donor unless you opt out, and only in the tens in countries where you have to opt in.
A 2019 meta-analysis by Jon Jachimowicz and colleagues pooled 58 default studies and found a solid average effect, but not a universal one: 46 found a significant positive effect, 10 found none and 2 backfired. Defaults worked best when people read them as a recommendation or as the normal state of things, and they were stronger in consumer choices than in environmental ones.
Audit your product’s defaults. Weekly summary email on or off? Private or shared? Which template loads first? Pick the option you’d honestly recommend to a friend. A default is only an advantage if users would still thank you after they notice it, so never pre-tick anything they’d be annoyed to discover.
The example
- Instead of
- “New workspace: blank page, no template, weekly progress email off.”
- Try
- “New workspace: “Client onboarding” template loaded, weekly progress email on (one click to turn off).”
Before you flush
List every preselected option in your signup and onboarding, then change one to the choice you’d personally recommend to a new user.