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Which is better: confirmation of the action or the possibility of its cancellation?

During software development, there comes a time when you need to design mechanisms for performing potentially dangerous actions. A couple of random clicks - and the user will put himself in an awkward position in front of his superiors or irrevocably destroy several hours of work. How to design programs to protect their users from such incidents?

Most often this problem is solved by providing a dialog box to confirm the action, and this is limited. If the performed action can lead to serious consequences, the user will read the message displayed in the window, and if he tried to do exactly what he did, he will confirm this action. Correctly?



Despite the popularity of the above mechanism, using the action confirmation dialog box is, in 90% of cases, wrong. Let's talk about why this is so.

Confirmation Action Dialog Box Issues


Here are some of the problems that accompany the use of user action verification mechanisms:

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  • We do not read texts displayed in dialog boxes designed to confirm actions. Even if a person reads the text in a similar window, he does not always give himself the opportunity to stop and think about what he has read. If nothing extraordinary happens, we believe that everything is going as it should, and we click on the confirmation button simply because it allows you to remove the small window that overlaps what we are doing now. The main button in any such window is immediately perceived as a button that allows the user to continue to do what he was doing.

Enumerating the shortcomings of the dialog boxes used to confirm actions is not enough to answer the question of why they are not recommended. Therefore, let's talk about the benefits of cancellation mechanisms.

Strengths of Cancellation Mechanisms


Here are some of the strengths of canceling actions:

  • These tools are created on the assumption that the user is confident in what he is doing. The main advantage of undo tools over confirmation windows is that the system does not try to predict user actions. Something like the cancel button just solves its task without asking the user questions about whether he is sure of the action being performed.
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  • The use of cancellation mechanisms allows users to see the results of their work themselves, and not read about it. Sometimes users are not 100% sure that their actions will lead exactly to the results they are striving for. The presence in the application of something like a cancel button allows the user to see the results of their actions and the results of their cancellation. This helps the user to determine whether he made the exact change he wanted to make to the system.

Effective use of rollback mechanisms


So, if the ability to rollback changes is very good, let's think about how best to implement this feature in an application. Here are some ideas for implementing quality change cancellation mechanisms:

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Sometimes showing a confirmation dialog box is all that a developer can do to protect a user from rash irreversible actions. In such cases, it is important to design such a window so that it truly protects the user from errors.

Here are some considerations regarding the design of action confirmation dialogs that are applicable when it is not possible to implement the undo functionality:

  • Try to make dialog boxes appear only in special cases. The best way to increase the efficiency of using dialog boxes is to make them appear less frequently.

Here is what is written about this in the book Alan Cooper on the Interface. The basics of interaction design ”, in the section“ The dialog box that shouted: “Wolf!” (Cooper A., ​​Reiman R., Cronin D. Alan Cooper about the interface. Basics of interaction design. - Transl. From English. - St. Petersburg: Symbol-Plus, 2009. - 688 p., Ill.):

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