(Illustrated above) A scientist modifies a certain parameter to influence how her analysis application will automatically compute a derived clinical variable. After double checking the effects of this parameter change within her most commonly used visualizations and procedures, she sets the modified value as the default setting for all new studies.

An architect finds that the input settings of a drawing tool in her building modeling application are making some parts of her work unnecessarily painstaking. She navigates to a single screen that contains all of her application preference settings and decreases the particular tool’s sensitivity to input.

A financial trader updates important automation defaults in his trading application that dictate how the computing tool will adaptively fill in proposed information under different circumstances.

Which variabilities in the operations, tasks, or larger activities that your team is striving to mediate might lead to a genuine need for customization options?

Which default settings in your team’s application concepts will individuals and organizations expect to have some control over? Why?

Which settings stand out as pivotal in your team’s sketched ideas for work mediation? Which will probably not capture workers’ interests and may only be accessed rarely, if at all?

What larger design and technology trends could influence your ideas about defaults and local tailoring of settings within your computing tool?

Which defaults in your application concepts could be optimized by covering the most common scenarios of use in targeted organizations?

Which defaults might be better optimized by considering the broadest variety of work practice?

Which parameters might be impossible for your team to set defaults for without local input from individual workers or their organizations?

Where could automated tailoring of settings be appropriate, useful, and clearly executed? Might it be more appropriate for such automations to suggest changes that workers could then select as customizations?

How might the scope of a single setting change apply to individual workers, larger groups, or entire organizations?

How could a central area for settings changes within your application’s framework enhance the clarity of related tasks?

How might new or unexpected changes to defaults be flagged and meaningfully communicated?

What negative impacts could changes to defaults have on cooperative and collaborative work? How might these impacts be mitigated?

Do you have enough information to usefully answer these and other envisioning questions? What additional research, problem space models, and design concepting could valuably inform your team’s application envisioning efforts?