Why Yes/No/Cancel buttons cause headaches and Aspirin sales to soar
Yes/No/Cancel causes Aspirin sales to soar
Martin Kleppmann's 2007 essay explains why labeling buttons Yes, No, and Cancel in software is bad design, causing user confusion and frustration. He argues that such labels conflate two questions, forcing users to guess which button discards work. Apple's descriptive labels, like "Don't Save" and "Save," are better, but negative questions and implicit relabeling remain problematic.
The meaning of these words depends very much on the question.
- sebastianconcpt
My ambiguity stack overflows...
_______________________
| Error. |
|_____________________|
| |
| Unknown Error |
| |
| (Continue) |
|_____________________|
- Grombobulous
I’ve always loved how TextEdit’s “don’t save” button is actually a red button that says “delete” for unsaved text files.
There’s no ambiguity there. The user is very well-informed that they’re about to quit and lose the document they were working on.
- thefourthchime
One of the most influential books I ever read was About Face by Alan Cooper. What he said about this bad modal dialogue is that you should simply not ask the user, and let them undo later.
This was heresy at the time, but turned out to be the native user flow for iOS later on. And now it's common in web apps.
https://www.amazon.com/dp/1118766571?lv=shuf&channelId=500&p...
- chuckadams
My favorite is apps that offer a way to cancel a long-running operation, where clicking "cancel" on the confirm dialog cancels the cancellation.
- frollogaston
It's actually more than yes/no/cancel. There's also a red X. I only know from experience that it's usually the same as cancel, but not always.