Comments on: Forgive your users; even when they are drunk! http://usabilityfriction.com/2008/10/09/forgive-your-users-even-when-they-are-drunk/ Usability shouldn't be a drag Wed, 18 Mar 2009 16:15:53 +0000 hourly 1 By: 10 Ways to Improve Usability When You Thought it Was Too Late http://usabilityfriction.com/2008/10/09/forgive-your-users-even-when-they-are-drunk/comment-page-1/#comment-74 10 Ways to Improve Usability When You Thought it Was Too Late Wed, 05 Nov 2008 10:44:45 +0000 http://usabilityfriction.com/?p=190#comment-74 [...] Confirmation: Make actions 2 step by prompting the user to confirm the action they have requested. Confirmation steps increase the friction of the interface and can be annoying if used too often. You don’t need confirmation steps if the actions are easily undo-able (for example the “Are you sure you want to delete the file” dialogue in Windows XP is unnecessary as the files can be simply removed from the trash). You don’t need to just have OK/Cancel dialogues to add a confirmation step, it could be an additional separate action in an “Arm/Fire” sense. I wrote an article about Google mail’s creative use of a confirmation step to forgive users even when they are drunk! [...] [...] Confirmation: Make actions 2 step by prompting the user to confirm the action they have requested. Confirmation steps increase the friction of the interface and can be annoying if used too often. You don’t need confirmation steps if the actions are easily undo-able (for example the “Are you sure you want to delete the file” dialogue in Windows XP is unnecessary as the files can be simply removed from the trash). You don’t need to just have OK/Cancel dialogues to add a confirmation step, it could be an additional separate action in an “Arm/Fire” sense. I wrote an article about Google mail’s creative use of a confirmation step to forgive users even when they are drunk! [...]

]]> By: Ashley Towers http://usabilityfriction.com/2008/10/09/forgive-your-users-even-when-they-are-drunk/comment-page-1/#comment-71 Ashley Towers Sun, 12 Oct 2008 15:10:24 +0000 http://usabilityfriction.com/?p=190#comment-71 Hi Mark, great comment - I completely agree! By far the best way is to let people do what they want and let them reverse any mistake - Google use this approach to good effect when you delete an email in gmail. However, once you've clicked send on an email it's gone so there's no way you could undo it using that approach. By using a series of questions that you have to think about, Mail Goggles stops you being able to 'click through' and ignore the warnings. You'd be amazed how right you are when you say people click through notices without reading them - have a look at this: http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080923-study-confirms-users-are-idiots.html Hi Mark, great comment – I completely agree! By far the best way is to let people do what they want and let them reverse any mistake – Google use this approach to good effect when you delete an email in gmail. However, once you’ve clicked send on an email it’s gone so there’s no way you could undo it using that approach. By using a series of questions that you have to think about, Mail Goggles stops you being able to ‘click through’ and ignore the warnings.

You’d be amazed how right you are when you say people click through notices without reading them – have a look at this: http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080923-study-confirms-users-are-idiots.html

]]> By: Mark Wotton http://usabilityfriction.com/2008/10/09/forgive-your-users-even-when-they-are-drunk/comment-page-1/#comment-70 Mark Wotton Sat, 11 Oct 2008 04:04:01 +0000 http://usabilityfriction.com/?p=190#comment-70 The problem is that people quickly learn to click through confirmations without thought, and all you've accomplished is to annoy someone a little more - it's a much better principle to forgive your users by making sure almost all actions can be undone easily. The problem is that people quickly learn to click through confirmations without thought, and all you’ve accomplished is to annoy someone a little more – it’s a much better principle to forgive your users by making sure almost all actions can be undone easily.

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