Sensible Defaults

As a developer, I'm very familiar with the idea of pickings sensible defaults when I write software. In the web-based database application world (i.e. snooze-fest), that usually means setting up an invalid default that will trigger an error if the user doesn't select anything. In other settings, though, you want to make sure the user doesn't take an action inadvertently by providing a bad default.

Such was my experience in signing up for Flixster at Simone's invitation. The sign-up process felt a little like a GoDaddy domain name registration with repeated screens asking for information I didn't want to provide. In most cases, I could bypass them by hitting continue. On the last screen, that wasn't the case. The system fired off "friend" invitations to something like 5 people by default when I hit continue on that last page.

Nice job Flixster developers.