Default It or Design It
How I learned to stop sweating every UI detail and ship faster
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I wasted too much time early in my design career sweating the wrong details. Now I ask one question before every UI decision:
"Default it, or design it?"
This simple heuristic has saved me countless hours and arguments, especially in startup environments where resources are limited and speed matters.
Every design project requires you to make hundreds of decisions. Some are big like the overall layout. Others are small like the hover state of a button. Facing too many choices can lead to analysis paralysis, making it hard to move forward.
Why this matters
Problems arise when designers spend too much time on lower-value minutia at the expense of big, strategic decisions: projects stall, deadlines slip, and teams get frustrated.
I've been guilty of this more times than I'd like to admit.
Looking back, I used to get lost trying to solve details that weren't immediately relevant. Like, I'd polish edge cases before the core flow was even solid. I thought I was being thorough but really, I was just misallocating energy.
Now I try to spot where the real leverage is. Not every moment in the product deserves the same attention. Some things just need to work. Others need to shine.
The two paths
When you default it, you're leaning on existing solutions: design systems, platform conventions, or vendor tools. You're not ignoring the problem, you're delegating the decision to something (or someone) that's already solved it well enough.
When you design it, you're choosing to spend the time because you believe that decision has the potential to differentiate. You're investing creative energy where it can make a meaningful impact.
Both paths are valid. The power comes from choosing intentionally.
The "Default It" approach
The "Default It" approach is most valuable when you’re getting hung up on a micro-level detail while working on a macro-level project.
It's not that the detail is unimportant, but it's not the intent of that work. By defaulting micro-level decisions to existing resources, you can expedite macro-level projects.
In my experience, many product managers lean toward this approach. "Defaulting it" helps move projects along faster by reducing scope. But if we default every decision, we're likely to miss opportunities to innovate.
The "Design It" approach
The "Design It" approach is most valuable when you need headspace to work in-depth on critical choices that shape outcomes in significant ways.
You can make time to "design it" with micro or macro-level work, but each requires your full attention. It can be difficult to toggle between these different points of view, so I find it helpful to scope projects intentionally to focus on one at a time.
Designers naturally gravitate toward this approach. It's where creativity and innovation shine. However, trying to design every small detail can slow projects to a crawl and lead to blown budgets.
Finding the right balance
Finding the right balance means negotiating which decisions to default and which to design so your team can focus attention in the right places at the right times.
Product managers might push for "defaulting it" to save time and stay on schedule, while designers might advocate for "designing it" to explore creative solutions. This healthy tension can lead to finding the sweet spot for product development.
For example, on one product I worked on, we needed to visualize large graph databases. Building a vector-based visualization library from scratch would have given us flexibility, but it wasn't going to move the needle for our customer experience. We decided to “default” that data viz solution to a third-party vendor whose entire focus was on building that technology. This freed our team to focus on applying those tools to solve our customers' problems more quickly and effectively.
How design systems fit In
As projects grow, certain decisions come up repeatedly. This is where design systems become valuable.
A design system is essentially your collection of team approved defaults.
While in the early days of a product you might default mostly to external industry standards, over time you'll encapsulate more of your own decision-making into custom defaults specific to your service.
By storing your "defaulted" decisions in a central repository, you reduce the overhead for making solid baseline design choices. This list evolves to reflect updated defaults as new projects demand new solutions, freeing up time to focus on unique challenges.
Final thoughts
"Default it or design it" helps me triage.
It helps my team align.
And it helps us ship.
By intentionally choosing when to default and when to design, I save time, focus on what's critical, and direct my creative energy to the most pressing problems.
Some moments in a product just need to work. Others need to shine.
“Default it or design it” helps me know the difference.
Until next time,
Patrick
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I love this idea. I usually ship default to start, see if the first batch of people to experience can navigate it well, then design it when it's not working.
Not sure if it's the most efficient pattern but it feels like it works well for us!