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What reasonable default? You don't know where people want to install your binaries and you do want people to know what other OSes you support. In UX if the numb

What reasonable default? You don't know where people want to install your binaries and you do want people to know what other OSes you support. In UX if the number of choices is very small, like those couple of OSes you support, it is always best to present them all.

josteink 7y ago
Every major player provides the reasonable default when downloading binaries. Every single one. There’s a reason for that. Regular users are not technical and if you ask them to make a choice based on technical matters (Windows, MAC, Linux, Apple AppStore, Android AppStore, Chrone WebStore, whatever), where you instead could have had -1 clear choice- already presented by default in a big nice button, you will lose conversions or increase tech-support costs. The evidence for this is so overwhelming that knowingly trying to ignore that makes it look like you have an agenda or horse to grind.
- zzzcpan 7y ago
  No, these are not UX metrics, these are commercial metrics. There is a reason conversions and tech-support costs and almost all a/b tests and all that are not even remotely good UX metrics, as they do not exist to measure anything users care about in the product, only what companies care about.
  - josteink 7y ago
    Okay.so let’s hypothetically say I buy your argument that providing a reasonable default is bad UX. In what other places of application development should we also stop providing reasonable defaults and force the user to choose instead? - country? city? - localization? - number for local support hotline? - email of logged in user? - type of currency for payments? No? Then why is having a reasonable default for downloads bad?
    - zzo38computer 7y ago
      My "WebOptions" idea would permit the user to customize these and other settings (both globally and locally; there could be some set of "common" keys as well as supporting keys specific for the server), in a similar format to cookies, although the server and document scripts would not be allowed to set them, and the user only sets them explicitly. For email, there is a "From" header, so that can be used if it is available. But anyways, the service should not make it difficult to download if it detects a wrong computer; it should allow it always, and should not be so difficult by trying to hide it.
- londons_explore 7y ago
  A good chunk of users don't know what OS they're running. Perhaps you should propose a feature detection for it. It could look like the media source API for resolutions and formats for web video - except the same for binary formats for software.

josteink 7y ago

Every major player provides the reasonable default when downloading binaries. Every single one. There’s a reason for that. Regular users are not technical and if you ask them to make a choice based on technical matters (Windows, MAC, Linux, Apple AppStore, Android AppStore, Chrone WebStore, whatever), where you instead could have had -1 clear choice- already presented by default in a big nice button, you will lose conversions or increase tech-support costs. The evidence for this is so overwhelming that knowingly trying to ignore that makes it look like you have an agenda or horse to grind.

zzzcpan 7y ago
No, these are not UX metrics, these are commercial metrics. There is a reason conversions and tech-support costs and almost all a/b tests and all that are not even remotely good UX metrics, as they do not exist to measure anything users care about in the product, only what companies care about.
- josteink 7y ago
  Okay.so let’s hypothetically say I buy your argument that providing a reasonable default is bad UX. In what other places of application development should we also stop providing reasonable defaults and force the user to choose instead? - country? city? - localization? - number for local support hotline? - email of logged in user? - type of currency for payments? No? Then why is having a reasonable default for downloads bad?
  - zzo38computer 7y ago
    My "WebOptions" idea would permit the user to customize these and other settings (both globally and locally; there could be some set of "common" keys as well as supporting keys specific for the server), in a similar format to cookies, although the server and document scripts would not be allowed to set them, and the user only sets them explicitly. For email, there is a "From" header, so that can be used if it is available. But anyways, the service should not make it difficult to download if it detects a wrong computer; it should allow it always, and should not be so difficult by trying to hide it.
londons_explore 7y ago
A good chunk of users don't know what OS they're running. Perhaps you should propose a feature detection for it. It could look like the media source API for resolutions and formats for web video - except the same for binary formats for software.