[ID Discuss] unsaved input

[Julie Stanford]

In regards to the person who suggested that there is no reason why a Save
button is needed and the app should always Save, I have an interesting
finding from a user study that I conducted a few years ago for a financial
application. 

We were also very interested in automaticallly saving the user's input so we
did not have any sort of Save button in the original design. Users could
click to different areas of the application that held their data, make
changes, go to other areas, and (voila!) everything would always be
automatically saved. However, in user testing, this severely backfired. Not
because users did not want their data saved, but because all other
applications provided them with a Save button and they were concerned that
if they did not hit Save, their data would be lost. So, we observed an
interesting phenomenon where users would enter informaton on a screen and
then would sit and stare uncomfortably for a while, looking confused. We
would ask them what they were looking for and they would explain that they
were looking for a "done" or "save" button to tell the computer that they
were done with this screen so that it could be saved and they could move on
to the next step in their task. Even telling users that the application
saved their data, did not help the situation. When we tested a revised
design that had a save button, everything worked great. 

So, my point is that although it is technically feasible to automatically
Save information and less steps for the users, in some cases the user may
have been "trained" that they need to save their data so removing that
option from them leaves them feeling like they have not completed a task and
cannot move on. 

In another application I created that involved organizing photos, I was able
to create an interaction that did not demand a save button. The target
audience was professional film photographers who were moving into the
digital word. In this case, users expected that if they moved photos around
on a screen or made some touchups that the information would automatically
be saved (because that is how it works in the real world if you are dealing
with physical photos) so the lack of Save button was wonderful.
_____________________________________
Julie Stanford
Principal, Sliced Bread Design | www.slicedbreaddesign.com
650-799-7225