Form fields prefilled with default values

Question

I am designing a form where users are asked to create an administrator for their website.

These following 3 fields are not obligatory to fill:

• email
• username
• password

If the user fills them, they create an admin user with the specific email, password, etc. When you don't the system uses the details of the current user for email & username and assigns a new password automatically for them.

My question is: Would it be OK to directly have the fields pre-filled with their account email and username and at the "password" field, something like "(randomly created password)".

Alternatively, should I first have a question: "Will the administrator be A. You B. Somebody else?" And according to the answer to either keep all info the same to his account or let them fill all data from scratch?

Answer 1

Actually your idea is quite good, this way your users have a "default value" that will speed up the process!

Still, I recommand you to display some message on the form (just below the box) with something like "We filled it for you, taking your account informations" to make them understand why things are filled (BONUS if you can have some green color, confirming everything is fine).

Still, I would recommand testing if bad emotions result for this kind of "intrusion" (I mean, they could NOT like at all the fact that you fill those info... Who knows?). Pre-test the idea with some people (using qualitative studies), then with more users in a "Beta Feature" before implementing it finally.

Also, I don't have enough information to give you details. But you should ask yourself if it's really usefull to ask them this if they're already connected? I don't see any kind of business who needs to "sub-create an account". Not to mention that if the results from your study "Beta Feature" shows that people are not confortable with this, you probably should auto-implement this (Without asking them to fill email address and password but in letting them do the minimum asked). This is not a "Best solution", since I don't know enough, but it's one of the solution you could implement.

Wish you best!