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Good Defaults

Also known as: Smart Defaults, Default Form Field Values

Tags: forms

Good defaults pattern is about helping users to answer questions on the form by providing good default values. This pattern saves the users work and reduces the possibility of input errors.

Travelstart is a travel reservation Website that uses “Good Defaults” design pattern. “Flight” is a preselected option, “from” field is prefilled with “Johannesburg” (Travelstart is a South African site), “Return” is selected from the dropdown since most of the people buy round trips, and it even makes a guess on the dates you’d like to travel. Also, the number of travelers is defaulted to 1 adult, and it searches from all airlines by default.

Booking a flight form on Travelstart
Source: http://www.openjet.co.uk/

Booking a flight form on Travelstart

What problem does the pattern solve?

  • When a good guess of the most common answer can be made, and most people won’t change the answer.
    • For example, if you app knows that the user who is signing up is in Finland based on his IP address, you could set the default value in the “Country” dropdown field to “Finland”.
  • When making a guess doesn’t annoy the user.
    • Don’t suggest gender, password, or make default the option to receive newsletters etc. from the site.

When to use it?

  • When a good guess of the most common answer can be made, and most people won’t change the answer.
    • For example, if you app knows that the user who is signing up is in Finland based on his IP address, you could set the default value in the “Country” dropdown field to “Finland”.
  • When making a guess doesn’t annoy the user.
    • Don’t suggest gender, password, or make default the option to receive newsletters etc. from the site.

How to use it?

  • Figure out what would be the most common answers for the questions on the form.
  • When reasonable, prefill the form fields with good default answers.
    • Be careful with selecting the default value – most people will stick with it.

Why to use it?

  • Providing good defaults makes completing the form faster and more simple.
  • It saves the users’ work.
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