Old UI/UX rule: Don't provide default values or notify people if you don't know what to do

In the old days there was a UI/UX rule that seems to have been forgotten by a lot of designers:

If you don’t know what to do in regards to (a) notifying users about something, or (b) choosing a default value when displaying something, don’t do anything. Don’t guess.

When you ignore this rule, you tend to piss off your users.

Several UI/UX design decisions in my 2015 Subaru provide great examples of violating this simple rule. In the first example, yesterday it was perfectly sunny here, the roads were completely dry, but when the temperature changed to 37 degrees Fahrenheit, there was a “bling” noise in my car. When I looked at the dashboard the car was warning me that the road — which was incredibly, completely dry for miles upon miles — could possibly be icy. This was a completely useless and annoying notification.

Another dumb thing about the car is that the rearview mirror displays text to show you what direction the car is facing by default. Every time I start the car I have to (a) turn on the ignition, and then (b) press a button on the rearview mirror to turn that text off. Seriously, how many people in the world need to know what direction they’re facing when they start their car?

I could go on for a while, but as I wrote in the first paragraph, if you’re in doubt about providing a default value for something or notifying human beings about things, be sure you’re right — don’t guess.