Intelligent Defaults

Some UsabilityEngineering decisions require you to decide between catering to the beginner or catering to the expert.

Choosing intelligent defaults is not one of those decisions, as it benefits all users. The beginner can acquire knowledge incrementally, learning only what they want. The expert can buzz around being productive, fiddling with only the choices they want.

Examples of intelligent defaults (specifically, those that follow the pattern of benefitting all levels of users).

Examples of bad (or lacking) defaults


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