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When it comes to the greater public, default settings might as well be the only available setting. Apart from a few 'techies' most people will never even touch
by stemuk 7y ago
When it comes to the greater public, default settings might as well be the only available setting. Apart from a few 'techies' most people will never even touch the default settings out of the naive belief that "the default setting is what's best for me".
As an alternative approach I would suggest empty settings to begin with, forcing the user to think about their preferences on first use.
- selebrazin 7y agoThat would only work if every browser implemented it but for the average user, choosing between a blank-slate approach where they have to parse through terminology they don't understand, and an alternative offering "sensible" defaults, I suspect most users would just pick the easier latter option.
- mikro2nd 7y agoPerhaps there's a middle ground. Give users a range of options (say 3 to 5) that aggregate the settings, ranging from "I don't really care about privacy" to "I wear a tinfoil hat to bed", along with pointers to where and how they might wish to delve deeper into more detailed settings. It can't be that hard...?
- slavik81 7y agoIf you put a big scary decision as the first thing users see, many will just close the browser because they don't know what they should pick. When they open a different browser that doesn't present them with that choice, they may conclude that it's not a problem on that other browser.