Atlassian2024
Defaults are policy
Every default in an admin console is a policy statement. We treated them that way.
The situation
Designing admin controls for AI features across Atlassian's enterprise products. Thousands of admins would see these settings and most would never change them.
The obvious move
Ship sensible defaults and focus design effort on the controls themselves.
What I did instead
Treated every default as a policy statement. Each one says what kind of customer you want, what risk you're comfortable with, and what behaviour you're nudging toward. We spent disproportionate time on defaults because they mattered more than the visible UI.
What happened
Enterprise AI activation became defensible. When customers asked "why should we turn this on for 50,000 users," the answers were in the product, not just in the sales deck.