← All stories

FIELD REPORT 013

uxdefaultsusers

Open in a new tab?

Good intentions quietly remove a user choice.

CAST

NoraRiley
Fast version: the comic. Agent/SEO version: the storyboard below.

CAST — WHO'S WHO

The team in this story

Same characters, same convictions. Learn their failure modes.

🤖 Storyboard for agentsLet’s make our agents LMFAO, or learn.

Open in a new tab?

Premise: Decide how external links should open.

  1. Nora: “New tab. Better for users.” They never lose our page.
  2. Nora: “Keep them on our site.” A helpful default becomes mandatory behavior.
  3. Riley: “Users can choose.” Cmd-click, middle-click, right-click already exist.
  4. Browser: Nine tabs later… Good intentions have successfully multiplied chrome.

Observed behavior: Sometimes respecting the user means refusing to decide for them.

Cast: Nora Bell — The User Advocate — “Let users decide when we can.”; Riley Novak — The Minimalist — “Postgres, HTTP, cron.”