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

[Alan Cooper]

Jim,

  Thanks for pointing out the flaws in shaunbergmann's reasoning.

  "The point being that the user should have the *option* of making a
choice, not be *required* to do so."

  It's really easy when you think about it...

  We did some design work for a chip fab company several years ago.
Their machine contained what they euphemistically referred to a
"Two-step gas." They explained that if any of this gas escaped the
machine, humans who breathed it would take two steps AND THEN DIE.
Needless to say, releasing this gas would be bad, and undo is not an
option.

  The typical technologist would simply say, "Tough beans." A good
designer would (as you pointed out) make it more involved to initially
select the risky action. The goal is to FORCE THE USER TO THINK about
what he is doing while ASSURING THAT HE IS FULLY INFORMED OF THE
CONSEQUENCES. Confirmations don't do that. But there are certainly many
ways to accomplish this. None of them are very enjoyable for typical
programmers to do, so they claim that they can't be done.

  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 Jim
Drew
Sent: Wednesday, June 13, 2007 12:53 PM
To: UI List
Subject: Re: [IxDA Discuss] Confirmation dialogs - the devil himself, or
a necessary evil?

>From: shaunbergmann at gmail.com, shaunbergmann at gmail.com
>
>You, the end user, better be darned sure that you REALLY wanted to do
>this.  There will not be a simple 'undo' presented to you, and what
>you are about to launch could take 2 or 3 minutes to complete.
>
>A less severe situation could be something more benign like turning
>off your home theatre system.  The simple 'power off' button again
>triggers a series of events, and it's entirely possible that the
>equipment requires a cooldown period before it can be turned on
>again.  Not quite releasing the hounds, but still extremely annoying
>if you %u2018accidentally%u2019 touched the %u2018home%u2019 then
>%u2018power off%u2019 button when picking up the touchpanel from the
>sofa.
>
>There are two solutions that I can see: 
>
>1. The devil incarnate: the Confirmation Dialog.
>2. Obfuscation of button location (better hiding the ejector seat
>lever)

There's a third one you haven't listed:
3. Design the system to be more tolerant of human error and
change-of-mind

Thus, in the "release the hounds" case, recognizing that the action may
have been done by accident or by curiosity, and can be dangerous to
foxes or groundskeepers (depending on the hound), don't code the system
to release the hounds *now*, but rather to release them in 30 seconds or
so.

In the prominent status area, you then put a progress counter:
"Releasing hounds in 29, 28, 27... Press Abort button to stop
release..."  At the end of the 30 seconds -- enough time for a "Whoops,
that's not what I wanted, abort" reaction, then you really do proceed
with the release.  (You maybe also turn on the outdoor audio "The hounds
will be released in 29, 28, 27..." to warn the groundskeepers, just in
case.)  You would also want a means of bypassing the 30 second delay --
I know what I'm doing, release them now, it's an emergency.

(Alternately, the countdown could be done to require the confirm,
automatically aborting if not confirmed in 30 seconds.  Depends on
whether you want to err on the side of caution or not.)

The point being that the user should have the *option* of making a
choice, not be *required* to do so.

-- Jim

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