The Power Of Default

Djamel Agaoua, CEO of Rakuten Viber, investigates the power of the humble default setting and how it literally controls our actions – for better and for worse

- Kym Winters

If the internet age has delivered us one thing, it is convenience. We can now communicate in minutes via email, as opposed to days via mail. We can find the answer to almost any question in a few taps versus spending hours in the library. And when we want to buy something, we no longer have to venture outside to visit separate stores; we now shop online and receive our purchases in the comfort of our own homes (sometimes the same day).

There has been a recent swell in commentary suggesting the digital revolution has not turned out to be a productivity booster as predicted. While the point may be debated, it’s apparent that the internet, especially the mobile internet, has driven a new standard of convenience in our lives. As a result, the principles that guide engineers and product designers are now firmly focused on making things as easy as possible.

However, when products have complex settings with nuanced implications, convenience becomes less obvious. In response, technology companies have gravitated towards building default settings that nominally make life simpler for users. But simple doesn’t always mean safe. To be less kind, the addiction to convenience has made it easier to set defaults that benefit technology companies more than users. Witness the Byzantine layers of Facebook’s privacy settings with their Orwellian default states.

Not only do most people not read terms and conditions and privacy policies with a lawyer’s sceptical eye, they also don’t tend to adjust (or even look at) their default settings. A century ago, signing a contract would have been a rare occurrence for the majority of people – now millions of us do it every day with a tap or two. The Magna Carta was signed on a table in a meadow in front of 25 barons and knights; now we could DocuSign it up and send it around in seconds, if only King John had email…