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

[Alan Cooper]

Jim, et al,

  "... there are unfortunately some operations (such as database
processing) where it is very difficult to offer a stop button on a
progress indicator ..."

  All software is "very difficult."  Offering a "stop button or a
progress indicator" is always possible. 

  Good interaction design is much more of a power play between
programmers having fun playing with their toys and interaction designers
looking out for the needs of users than it is a puzzle for someone to
solve. Confirmation dialogs simply don't achieve the goals they are
asked to. Making everything undo-able does.

  Pardon me, I must go play with my toys now.

  Good luck,
  Alan

  PS. I understand that we must compromise with the larger forces of
business that buffet us, but that doesn't mean we have to become
quislings. Just because they force ill-chosen compromises upon us does
not mean that we are required to justify them as being necessary or even
adequate. 

__________
Cooper | design for a digital world
Alan Cooper
alan at cooper.com | www.cooper.com
__________ 
"Starbucks is selling a public gathering place. Coffee is the enabling
mechanism."-James Howard Kunstler
 

-----Original Message-----
From: discuss-bounces at lists.interactiondesigners.com
[mailto:discuss-bounces at lists.interactiondesigners.com] On Behalf Of
Paul Nuschke
Sent: Monday, June 11, 2007 6:32 AM
To: Jim Drew
Cc: ixd-discussion
Subject: Re: [IxDA Discuss] Confirmation dialogs - the devil himself,or
a necessary evil?

I don't recall which prompts he specifically disliked. Word has a dialog
similar to what Cooper was suggesting (the "recovery" dialog when there
is a
cached version and the original) and it is much more confusing than a
Yes/No/Cancel prompt because it's often not in context. Imagine is you
make
edits in Word and close it out, knowing that you didn't want to save the
changes. Then you go off to do something and don't get back to the
document
until the next day. Would you remember which version was which?

You make the point that these prompts are only necessary because we are
trained to explicitly save. If you have a new interface where this
auto-save
paradigm works, then it makes sense. But if you are a Word user and rely
on
Yes/No/Cancel when you exit a document to either save or discard your
changes, then changing that paradigm is going to cause a lot of
confusion
and problems.

Regarding the operations that take a long time, there are unfortunately
some
operations (such as database processing) where it is very difficult to
offer
a stop button on a progress indicator. And it is not always evident how
long
the operation will take beforehand (especially to new users), so a
prompt is
warranted. It's not perfect, but it's better than accidentally starting
an
operation that takes half an hour.

You also have to evaluate the cost-benefit of using a prompt or trying
to
code the prompt out. The prompt is almost always much shorter, so while
ideally we'd live in a prompt free world, I don't think that it is going
to
happen any day soon. :)

Paul


On 6/10/07, Jim Drew <cfmdesigns at earthlink.net> wrote:
>
>
> On Jun 10, 2007, at 7:28 AM, Paul Nuschke wrote:
>
> > 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.
>
> I though About  Face was pretty clear that this was one of the worst
> places to put that sort of an alert.  Why do we need to remind the
> user  to  save? Why can't  we just do the save for him?  (And stash a
> temp copy of the original file to revert back to if needed, tossing
> it when he closes the doc with its changes.) The only reason we
> "need" this alert is that we've always had it, so users are trained
> to think that they need to explicitly save and thus that if they
> don't save, their changes are reverted.
>
>
> > 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).
>
> Wasn't this one  also pooh-poohed  there? If not, it should have
> been.  Don't tell the user "Hey, wait, we're  not  going to start
> this long long operation  yet, we're going to wait a  while  longer
> and slow you down more by simply telling you it will take a while --
> and not even let  you cancel." Have a status/progress indicator that
> gives that info instead.  And make the  application multi-threaded so
> as few action block the process as possible.
>
> -- Jim
>
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