Every product has a moment where the user has to pick: which setting, which plan, whether to bother trying the new thing at all. But spoiler: most of the time users don’t really “pick.” They just take whatever’s already sitting in front of them. In these popular teardowns, I break down what real products got right (and wrong) about defaults and how they present a choice.
These are for you if you’re a designer, PM or growth leader looking to learn how to drive engagement. Curious about working with Irrational Labs on defaults and choice architecture? Reach out: kristen@irrationallabs.com.
The power of defaults: How Google’s $18B payment changed consumer behavior
👉 Being the easy choice is worth more than being the better one
In 2020, Google paid Apple $18 billion to be the default search engine on the iPhone. Why would anyone pay that? They understood human behavior. And history. In 1995 Netscape had the better browser and 80% of the market, but it didn’t last. Five years later, Internet Explorer had over 90%. Why? It came preinstalled with Windows.
Google knew we use whatever’s in front of us. We get the car loan from the dealer, the credit card from the bank that already has our checking account, the MRI at whatever clinic our doctor faxed the referral to. So before you bet your product wins on quality alone, look hard at what Google spent to skip that fight.
What you’ll learn:
Why being the easy option beats being the better one
When it’s worth paying to be the default
Arc Search: Why defaults are the future of search
👉 One extra tap is enough to lose a user to their old habit
You can always spot an Arc user, because they’ll tell you. People who use Arc love Arc. So I downloaded the search app expecting magic, ran my first search, and got a plain webpage that looked like Chrome. I was like, wait, what did I do wrong?
In early versions of Arc, there was a fatal flaw. Arc’s gorgeous AI summaries only showed up if you tapped “Browse for Me” instead of just hitting enter. In this teardown, we explore how to change the status quo behavior and start a new habit. There are some lessons in what to do, but also lessons in what not to do.
What you’ll learn:
How much a single extra tap can cost
Why a better product still loses to an old habit
Defaults, discoverability, & design clarity: How does the Substack app stack up?
👉 What you pre-check decides how much users walk away with
Ask someone to add pizza toppings to a plain pizza and they add a couple; hand them a fully loaded pizza with all the toppings already loaded up and ask them to remove some toppings, and they keep way more. Opt-out beats opt-in. The lesson from this Substack teardown is how Substack (yes, the app Substack) could design a product that hands people a fully loaded pizza.
Which small change in onboarding could improve engagement later
How Substack designed its first session
Bank of America: Why UX designers should give up the ghost button
👉 The action you want taken has to be the thing users can't miss
Buttons matter. When I first started in behavioral science, I dismissed them as a small part of page design. I have since learned that changes to the button positioning and copy can have the greatest effects of all UX changes. So what is wrong with BankofAmerica.com’s buttons? Can you see it? Can you tell?
No, of course you can’t, and that’s exactly the problem. The action they want you to take is hiding in a “ghost button”: low contrast, gray-on-gray, basically invisible. Every A/B test on record (even Booking.com, who tests everything) says high-contrast buttons win, because a button is just a place to put someone’s attention, and you can’t act on what you never noticed. It’s not rocket science. So why ship the invisible one?
What you’ll learn:
How to make the action you want impossible to miss
What to measure your design team on
Nuuly: How to increase user choice without decreasing conversions
👉 A giant catalog stops overwhelming people the moment you give them a way to cut it down
Okay, I’m genuinely excited about this one. Nuuly is the Rent the Runway for hipsters: every month I pick six pieces, wear them, ship them back, and do it all again. Every month I face a genuinely overwhelming wall of choice (”wow, cute dress, why have I never seen that before?”), and I keep coming back anyway.
Nuuly decreases the burden of choice by keeping the giant catalog but making it navigable, with filters and little curated assortments (”going out,” “strapless fun”) so you’re never staring at all of it at once. And it keeps the stakes low: six items, not one, plus a fresh shot next month, so no single pick feels fateful. Nuuly’s solution to choice is a clever one: give people a big selection and an easy way to narrow it.
What you’ll learn:
How to offer a huge selection without overwhelming people
Why lowering the stakes of a choice gets more people to decide
That’s it for this best-of edition. Whether you’re setting a default, cleaning up a choice screen, or trying to get more people through a flow, these five teardowns cover the behavioral science you need.
Want to work with Irrational Labs on defaults and choice architecture? We've helped companies like Lyft, Kiva, and Google redesign the choices and defaults their users face (Lyft saw a 173% increase in opt-ins to its Women+ Connect feature, and Kiva a 26% increase in completed loan applications). Reach out: kristen@irrationallabs.com.
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