A good interface feels like nothing. It removes friction, takes decisions off our hands and lets the desired outcome happen as if by itself. That is precisely why it is so easy to overlook that an interface is a form of administration.
Whoever sets the default
Every default is a decision someone made for others. Which option is preselected? Which is three clicks away? Which does not exist at all? In public administration this would be called procedural law. In software it is called product design – and it carries no comparable obligation to justify itself.
Whoever sets the default often sets the room to move.
Convenience as rule
This does not mean design must be manipulative. Most interfaces are well meant and often helpful. But help and steering are hard to separate. A system that suggests my next action also shapes which actions I consider at all.
Three test questions
For 027B any interface can be measured by three questions: which decision is being shifted here – and to whom? Can the default be understood, changed and justified? And what does it cost the user to act differently than intended?
Good interfaces remove friction. Sometimes they remove dissent along with it.
