An example of good UI desgin

vorbis

Normally, I wouldn't bother posting about something so petty but its a Monday and my company has subjected me to countless hours of crap about design. On our internal time entry system, the following dialog appears after clicking the cancel button. I was about to click ok to confirm the cancel until I actually read the dialog. Probably the most counter intuitive confirm box I have ever seen.

l337

would you prefer to click ok to cancel and click cancel to not cancel?

OfflerCrocGod

l337 wrote:

would you prefer to click ok to cancel and click cancel to not cancel?

How about with better English? Cancel = cancel operation / Ok = continue operation.

aidan_walsh

vorbis wrote:

I wouldn't bother posting about something so petty

There is nothing at all petty about UI design. IMO, its one of the most neglected areas of development.

Capt'n Midnight

I still get confused by the one Excel gives when you try to "save as" a different version and the warning about features will be lost..

bonkey

vorbis wrote:

I was about to click ok to confirm the cancel until I actually read the dialog.

And yet the UI would have been whats at fault had you not read the dialog?

Probably the most counter intuitive confirm box I have ever seen.

I agree, only because it should have used a yes/no set of buttons, with the dialog telling you what the impact of the operation you had chosen was, and asked you if you wished to continue.

Having said that, there is a case to be made for making confirmation dialog boxes "counter-intuitive" for dealing with almost exactly what happened to you. Many users select an option, believing they know what it will do. A dialog pops up warning them about the impact, and they just click Yes or OK without reading, only later to discover that the operation wasn't quite what they thought.

Personally, I'd say there's a case for a counter-intuitive setup on yes/no buttons, and a configuration option somewhere in the application to turn off the confirmation (which shouldn't be on the dialog itself).

I've lost track of the number of times I've had the following type of converstaion with users:

"My Application crashed".
"OK - when it crashes it should have shown a Dialog Box, telling you that an error occurred, basic information about the error, and perhaps an indicator of what to do to fix it".
"Yes, I think that came up".
"What did it say?"
"I don't know - I just clicked on OK".

Sometimes, you gotta break the UI to better cope with the brokenness of users.

jc

Syth

I don't like the over-relyance on yes/no/cancel or ok/cancel dialog boxes. The programmer should change the text of the buttons to something more meaningful. In your example, maybe 'Keep the timesheet' and 'Cancel the timesheet'.

In fact, I think cancel was a bad choice for the action. Delete or remove would be much better, in my unqualified opinion.

WizZard

It's a limitation of Javascript. You can't change the text of the buttons!
Those web based javascript prompts are the most awkward things about UI design because you are not allowed to alter the button text.

The one workaround is to use VBScript to pop up a messagebox where you can actually set the text of the buttons to Yes/No, but that causes other complications (in that it can break browser compatability)

bonkey

They could have replaced the message box with a full web-page, though. Then you've complete control over whatever it is you want to do.

Sure, it mightn't look as pretty as a dialog box, but its effectively just as modal and can be far clearer.

jc

RicardoSmith

aidan_walsh wrote:

There is nothing at all petty about UI design. IMO, its one of the most neglected areas of development.

I couldn't agree more. Most programmers are extremely bad at designing interfaces. Then when users struggle with the interface, they can't see its their interface causing the problems.

aidan_walsh

RicardoSmith wrote:

I couldn't agree more. Most programmers are extremely bad at designing interfaces. Then when users struggle with the interface, they can't see its their interface causing the problems.

Great primer article on UI design