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

Mon Jun 11 18:42:01 PDT 2007

An example of useful transitional dialog box by the notorious IxD-evil-doers
is attached. It is helpful for the people, like myself, who got used to one
tab per window paradigm. Eventually I will dismiss this confirmation box via
provided option...

But wait! I am having second thought... I guess, much better option would
have been to reopen the same browser tabs with the same URLs (as well as
browsing history) I had, when I closed the window. Oh well, some day the
prince will come...

But wait! ... Nope, false alarm...

-- 
Oleh Kovalchuke
Interaction Design is the Design of Time
http://www.tangospring.com/IxDtopicWhatIsInteractionDesign.htm

On 6/11/07, Alan Cooper <Alan at cooper.com> wrote:
>
> Paul, et al,
>
> "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. "
>
> "...it is much more confusing..." not because the original problem
> wasn't so bothersome, but because the new solution is even worse.
>
> I generally find that Microsoft does not offer stellar examples of how
> Things Should Be Done. They do have the single bold characteristic of
> being omnipresent, but that confers nothing on their design cred. If
> they attempt to solve a problem with a new design, and that design
> fails, it should not reflect *anything* back on the quality of the
> original problem. It should simply be noted that Microsoft, once again,
> tried and failed (and they will certainly try and fail many more times,
> proving once again that Thomas Edison's reliance on brute force as a
> product development tool has longer legs than any of us might wish for).
>
> Good luck,
> Alan
>
> __________
> 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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