If you, as the product builder, are unsure of your user's needs (or desires), it can be tempting to simply delegate those decisions onto them.

For example, imagine that you're building a dashboard, and don't know what the "ideal" layout would be.

So, you just let the user have full customisation over how it looks, and which components go where.

It sounds okay in principle, but you:

• Give the user more decisions to make (you've just delegated it to them).
• Allowing the user to create rubbish dashboards (low efficiency, lower value).

• Default filters and settings — this is removing the initial decision of "how should I be viewing this content".
• Default views and layouts — e.g., when you use Stripe, you don't create your dashboard from scratch. They've optimized one for you.
• Features on by default — e.g., autocorrect is turned on by default, it'd be a waste of time to ask every user if they wanted it.

If you, as the product builder, are unsure of your user's needs (or desires), it can be tempting to simply delegate those decisions onto them.

For example, imagine that you're building a dashboard, and don't know what the "ideal" layout would be.

So, you just let the user have full customisation over how it looks, and which components go where.

It sounds okay in principle, but you:

• Give the user more decisions to make (you've just delegated it to them).
• Allowing the user to create rubbish dashboards (low efficiency, lower value).

• Default filters and settings — this is removing the initial decision of "how should I be viewing this content".
• Default views and layouts — e.g., when you use Stripe, you don't create your dashboard from scratch. They've optimized one for you.
• Features on by default — e.g., autocorrect is turned on by default, it'd be a waste of time to ask every user if they wanted it.