Click OK to Cancel

Here’s a devious twist on trained behavior. In the normal confirmation dialog, you click Cancel to back out of some action you don’t want to do:

Out of curiosity, I clicked a sales-pitch link from a Google search I normally wouldn’t. When I clicked my browser’s Back button, the following confirmation dialog appeared:

This is devious in several ways:

• I clicked my browser’s Back button. I didn’t click the Oh Please Show Me An Annoying Pop-up button. I just want to see the previous page, nothing else. Now I’m unhappy.
• Cancel/OK buttons are confusing enough on their own. To receive a discount I click Cancel? I thought clicking Cancel would stop what I didn’t want to happen. Will clicking OK infect my laptop with leeches?
• Cancel and OK are in most cases bad names for buttons. Use descriptive verbs, such as “Yes, leave this page” and “No, stay here” (of course, you’d have to fake a confirmation dialog to control the button labels).
• Don’t make the selection I most likely don’t want the default action. And don’t give the buttons equal visual weight.

Make Them Smile

My wife Mehera bought a candle and when I opened the tube to smell the candle, I smiled. In the tube on top of the candle was a matchbook, with the candle maker’s logo, of course. In our house, we don’t light things often, so finding matches isn’t always easy. Big Dipper Wax Works made it easy.

Big Dipper Beehive Candle

Last spring, I attended a workshop by Dan Buchner from Design Continuum in which he discussed and had us design the out-of-the-box experience for a media player. One of the points I took away is that experience design, like most other design, works best when you don’t notice it. You’re too busy smiling.