Michael Schofield
Sep 2, 2018 · 1 min read

Hey there. I think it’s great you’re so impassioned about this. A lot of folks don’t think very hard about how links behave in their app, so just having an argument one way or the other shows that you’re thinking about that end-user.

Here’s what I said:

So, my argument is super conservative. It’s situated around the power of convention and smart defaults, and that subverting those — going against the grain — might involve more complexity, confusion, and cost than you might expect.

— and I think it holds up, but it doesn’t prevent you making a different choice that’s better for your thing. All this writeup asks is that, hey, you give it the thought it’s due.

It’s definitely been awhile since I wrote this but I went through my examples and those that I linked out, and I think they still hold up too. Everyone I pointed to have a lot of clout and perform a ton of research, and one of the main themes of this whole writeup is that a lot of what we feel to be true isn’t supported by the user data.

I don’t care what you eventually choose, but I’m glad you did some googling first and gave it the appropriate thought.

👍

    Michael Schofield

    Written by

    User Experience Development Lead @WhereByUs. 🎙 Metric: the User Experience Design Podcast (metricpodcast.com).