[IxDA Discuss] Confirmation dialogs - the devil himself, or a necessary evil?

[Paul Nuschke]

For a project at my previous job, I wrote a standardization document for
confirmation dialogs or "prompts" (for desktop applications).

I think that Cooper says in About Face or maybe "Inmates" that these prompts
are really there to hide flaws in the software and I think that is a good
guiding principle.

However, I can think of at least two prompts which are pretty useful. One of
the most obvious prompts is the Yes/No/Cancel dialog that many apps use when
you make changes and don't save them before you attempt to exit. It is far
easier to ask before they leave if they want to save those changes than when
they return. Another useful prompt is when an action may take a long time
and it is difficult to note that through the interface (this latter prompt
may be helpful initially but annoying later, so the user should be able to
disable it).

I really dislike the delete confirmation prompts. There is almost always a
way to avoid them through clever programming.

Paul Nuschke
Human Factors Analyst
www.electronicink.com

On 6/8/07, Josh Viney <jviney at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> To say that confirmation dialogs are pure evil or completely unnecessary
> would be a mistake. I've found that they can be extremely useful in web
> apps
> in two specific cases.
>
> The first, when there is no "undo" and the desired action risks permanent
> change is fairly significant. Consider a content management system about
> to
> publish changes to a site live. Not such a bad idea to ask "are you sure
> you
> want to publish something that everyone with web access can see?" before
> publishing.
>
> The second, when you don't want users to do something. This is a tricky
> case, but there are occasions when users must be allowed to do something
> that is not optimal for the business. Think about a subscription based
> service. Putting a small roadblock in front of users who want to cancel
> their accounts can be huge.
>
> Of course, I think that confirmation dialogs are frequently abused and
> products of poor product design or messaging. In the subscription based
> service example above - isn't there a better way to increase lifetime
> value
> of users than preventing them from leaving? There probably is.
>
> --
> Josh Viney
> EastMedia Group
> http://www.eastmedia.com
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