When you add an app to your phone or to your computer, there are many choices made for you. Often called ‘default settings’, these are choices made by the developers and marketers of the product. They can include things like language, where to store different bits of the application, which templates to use, how to capture your use of the product, and so on. They make the set up of the application easy and faster for you.

Default settings are everywhere. Some companies have default pension contributions for their employees, which you have to ‘opt out’ of rather than ‘opt in’. TVs come with application and channels ‘pre-loaded’ as default. Cars have hundreds of default settings. And so do our projects, programmes, sectors, and the ecosystems in which we work and live.

The trick is be aware of our own default settings. And being aware of the defaults in the systems we work within. Sometimes we like the default choices made for us and sometimes we don’t.

What default settings do you want to change?

Photo by Sten Ritterfeld