On the Humble Default 339
Hugh Pickens sends along Kevin Kelly's paean to the default. "One of the greatest unappreciated inventions of modern life is the default. 'Default' is a technical concept first used in computer science in the 1960s to indicate a preset standard. ... Today the notion of a default has spread beyond computer science to the culture at large. It seems such a small thing, but the idea of the default is fundamental... It's hard to remember a time when defaults were not part of life. But defaults only arose as computing spread; they are an attribute of complex technological systems. There were no defaults in the industrial age. ... The hallmark of flexible technological systems is the ease by which they can be rewired, modified, reprogrammed, adapted, and changed to suit new uses and new users. Many (not all) of their assumptions can be altered. The upside to endless flexibility and multiple defaults lies in the genuine choice that an individual now has, if one wants it. ... Choices materialize when summoned. But these abundant choices never appeared in fixed designs. ... In properly designed default system, I always have my full freedoms, yet my choices are presented to me in a way that encourages taking those choices in time — in an incremental and educated manner. Defaults are a tool that tame expanding choice."
Bollocks (Score:5, Interesting)
Default was first used in computer science in the 1960s because that is when computer science, as we knew it, began. It was picked up from common usage outside of computer science, and was general use well before then. Unfortunately I am old enough to remember it as a common term in the 1950s. For example the default land area for a house (at least in my part of the world) was a quarter of an acre and it used to be referred to as the default area.
Re:Bollocks (Score:2, Interesting)
A good translation for default to other languages (Score:4, Interesting)
Non English speakers / translators!
Did you have trouble translating the word "default" into other languages? How difficult/easy was it to find a translation for "default" for user manuals in, say, jp or cn or fr?
Asking because I had trouble figuring out a good word for it in Hindi. Still not sure if we have the right word.
Do note that /. only allows ascii in posts.
Re:Bah-loney (Score:3, Interesting)
If defaults are to be defined as a configurable initial state, then they've been around for a lot longer than he's claiming.
As far as I can see, his point is that only in the past half century humans have started to consider default as a valid configuration and engineers carefully tweaked the default to be what most of their customers needed.
A few examples (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:A good translation for default to other languag (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:What? (Score:3, Interesting)
That's the beauty of a default: it'll just freaking work. Not ideally, but good enough to get you going and let you change it later on, at your own pace.
Wrong. That's hardware detection. And it's gotten so good I don't even have an xorg.conf anymore.
Very cool TED talk (Score:2, Interesting)
I recall watching this TED talk a while ago that touches on the subject of how defaults heavily influence our decisions. Cool stuff:
http://www.ted.com/talks/dan_ariely_asks_are_we_in_control_of_our_own_decisions.html [ted.com]
Dunno... I didn't RTFA ;) (Score:3, Interesting)
So what are good defaults for configuration? I think of it as a form of compression.
The most common+safe+useful settings should be the default. The trouble is figuring out the right balance of safety and usability for your product or system.
It's not easy to get right, and that's why a lot of stuff is crappy or just mediocre[1]
For many things it doesn't have to be just "default vs ADVANCED mode with zillions of settings".
It could be: Small, Regular, Large, Extra Large, Custom/Advanced. With Regular being the default selected option.
See the compression of the decision tree? You don't want most of your users to have to make too many unnecessary decisions. Even if they can make the decisions - it's more work for them and makes things more error prone.
McD doesn't have their staff ask users the details of what they want upfront- they don't ask whether you want ketchup, pickle etc. The sets are listed and there's Regular and Large (and supersize?). Any further customization if possible is on demand.
And they go "Will you have fries with that" even if you already said "No" or "yes" to fries... Hmmm maybe McD isn't such a good example
[1] The dev gives up thinking really hard about what the default should be, picks the first somewhat usable one and replies with "WORKSFORME" if users complain.
Re:Slashdot defaults (Score:2, Interesting)
That is the most user-unfriendly interface mistake.. to not match what the user expects based on their other experiences.
Is there no preview message to clue people in?
Ah.... so I just did a preview message and I see what you mean. Okay, so I'll toss in a few HTML breaks to make paragraphs and...
much better. Guess I got lucky reading this early
That's no default! (Score:1, Interesting)
In the US, having a light-switch up for on is not the default. It is the legally required setting. You cannot install the switch the other way without breakng a law called The National Electical Code. Likewise, you can't drive on the left side of the road in the US without break the vehicle code. Of course, one is more likely to be prosecuted than the other. But believe me, if you do your own wiring, the inspector will not sign off your bulding permit until you comply.