Are dialogs too easy?

Published on August 25, 2005 in Geek. 1 Comment

François Joseph de Kermadec over at the O'Reilly MacDevCenter asks if dialogs in their current state are too easy:

Modern dialogs, on any interface, come with a default "OK" button that one can systematically trigger by pressing return or enter on our keyboards. It's easy, tempting and a seemingly quick solution.

I would tend to agree. It's all too easy, when shown a dialog, to hit enter or click on "OK" without thinking. If the action happens to be destructive (i.e. non-reversible), then some cursing might ensue.

However, I don't think implementing a text field that requires you to type "yes" or "no" is the solution. The approach that was revealed in iTunes 4.9 (highlighted by Fraser Speirs) is a good solution. Instead of "Yes"/"No"/"Cancel", verbs are used: "Move to Trash"/"Keep Files"/"Cancel", which (hopefully) forces the user to look at the dialog and think before continuing. After seeing that post by Fraser, we modified the way Connoisseur behaved. I certainly find it clearer when using the application now.

UPDATE: I think this is probably one of the worst dialogs I've seen:

iTunes Sync Dialog

Despite the fact that there's a lengthy explanation, who's going to read it? The user only sees the "Yes" and "No" buttons (it's one redeeming feature is that "No" is the default. Phew!) After a casual glance, the user is likely to have no idea that by clicking "Yes", their entire iPod will be wiped and re-synced with the current computer. Argh. The amount of people that have done this and emailed us about it is astounding!

Instead, why bot have "Wipe iPod" and "Keep iPod" as the options? I'm sure there are better solutions to this, but that's about all I can scrounge up at this time, at the butt-end of the week. :)

1 Responses to “Are dialogs too easy?”

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  • FJ
    August 26, 2005 at 1:59 am

    Hi!

    Thank you very much for the kind comment and trackback!

    Yes, using verbs instead of buttons, as suggested by the Apple Interface Guidelines, is a definite step in the right direction. I feel that, in this case, the verbs should be very specific (such as “Install”, “Download”, “Activate”) but this is definitely a viable solution.

    FJ

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