Should you use Yes/No or Ok/Cancel on your message boxes?

http://ux.stackexchange.com/q/9946/7235

by laurent123456 • 14 years ago

147 75 14 years ago

ux.stackexchange.com

timerickson• 14 years ago

My favorite anti-pattern to this is the following:

"Would you like to cancel this transaction?"

"OK" – "Cancel"

jfb3• 14 years ago

Talk about an unambiguous sign that whoever is writing this software is truly and deeply giving zero (0) shits about their job.

igul222• 14 years ago

I don't think that's the case. It's very possible to be a good programmer and care deeply about your work, but at the same time be a terrible UX designer. Unfortunately a lot of software companies don't realize this and give UX the priority it deserves; instead they make their coders guess about it, which leads to things like this dialog.

Alterlife• 14 years ago

Or, the error message was written by someone whose first language is not English... and the company in question did not enforce review.

B-Con2• 14 years ago

Or maybe the backend code is analogous to

    bool exit_handler(obj) {
        return confirm_exit(obj->description)
    }

and he simply missed the unfortunate dialog box that resulted in one of those cases. An oversight, but when the subtitles of the user presentation is so decoupled from the code it can be easy to miss.

bobbles• 14 years ago

I've seen the even simpler dialog:

"Cancel?"

"OK" - "Cancel"

silon3• 14 years ago

I've seen a better one, with 2 cancel buttons, following "action"/cancel model.

jonhess• 14 years ago

I've seen set top boxes that offer three answers to yes/no questions.

"Switching the channel will switch to live mode and lose your rewind buffer. Do you want to switch to channels?"

[YES] [NO] [Cancel]

ctdonath2• 14 years ago

I've had to implement an industry-standard medical protocol which had 6 values for "sex".

Cowen• 14 years ago

I actually prefer the idea of using "Don't" instead of "Cancel." When combined with always using a verb instead of "Yes" or "OK", I think it makes for completely unambiguous dialog.

"Would you like to format this disk?"

"Format" - "Don't"

"Would you like to cancel this transaction?"

"Cancel" - "Don't"

magic_haze• 14 years ago

Not completely unambiguous, though. I've seen plenty of software with negations in their dialog messages ("Don't delete x?") Particularly egregious with driver installations. Everything considered, buttons with actual verbs seem the most foolproof.

krichman• 14 years ago

It reminds me of that bash.org quote.

"0 is false and 1 is true, correct?"

"1" - "0"

wging• 14 years ago

1, morganj

jussij• 14 years ago

I much prefer:

"Application has detected and error!"

"OK" – "Cancel"

WalterBright• 14 years ago

These kinds of things can be life or death in airplanes.

It used to be in the Air Force that full throttle was called "takeoff power". Then one day a jet was making a landing, and the copilot decided they needed to abort. The first thing you do on abort is go to full power, so he yelled "takeoff power". The pilot chopped the throttle, thinking he meant "take off power", causing an accident.

The offical phrase for full throttle was then changed to "full power" (or "maximum power", I forgot).

sevenproxies• 14 years ago

In general aviation the term "takeoff/go-around" or "TOGA" is used, with the go-around phase used for aborting landings.

huhtenberg• 14 years ago

It's like that joke about a Belarusian referendum ballot:

  Do you not object for the president to remain in power indefinitely?

  [ ] No,  I don't object
  [ ] Yes, I don't object

barking• 14 years ago

"Would you like to cancel this transaction?"

"OK" – "Cancel"

Easy, just replace would with wouldn't :)

bunderbunder• 14 years ago

My absolute favorite on this one is a dialog that pops up if an assertion fails in a .NET program. It has three buttons whose names have a distinguished provenance: Abort, Retry, Ignore.

Those names don't exactly describe what the buttons do. Fortunately, though, someone at Microsoft noticed the problem and fixed it. So now the title bar reads, "Assertion Failed: Abort=Quit, Retry=Debug, Ignore=Continue"

sigzero• 14 years ago

It depends on how the question is phrased in the message box.

batiudrami• 14 years ago

The point is that the question should not be phrased in such a way the the meanings of the text on the buttons could be ambiguous.

OK/Cancel is better than Yes/No, but (as noted in the top answer) worse than stating specifically what clicking the button will do.

tuananh2• 14 years ago

The problem is people didn't read the question carefully

laurent123456• 14 years ago

Good point, I think we should always assume that the user just didn't read the question at all, and make the button actions explicit.

If the required action takes more space than a button label, perhaps it's a sign that the UX should be reviewed.

InclinedPlane2• 14 years ago

The problem is that too many dialogs are designed to require reading an overly verbose message when in reality the vast majority of the time the 2 or 3 words on an appropriately named button are all the context a user needs.

If I initiate a format on a drive volume I don't need a lecture on what a format does and what the risks are, I know them already, I just need a confirmation step.

dakimov• 14 years ago

The answer there is perfect. Nothing to add.

rm999• 14 years ago

Yeah my thoughts too, I haven't seen anyone improve on the top answer. No one wants to read the dialogue box, so make it as easy as possible.

flogic• 14 years ago

Quite often the dialogue text leaves one unclear in what the button will do.

myg2042• 14 years ago

A random idea, maybe an alternative is to label the buttons w/ the actions themselves, i.e. no message + Y/N,Ok/Cancel labels. For Example, instead of: Would you like to cancel this transaction? {Yes,No} just have: {Continue Transaction|Stop Transaction}

... just a thought, I'm no UX designer.

notatoad• 14 years ago

If you click the link, you'll see that is the preferred solution.

myg2042• 14 years ago

Ah, yes indeed. I suppose yes/no scheme may be applicable to command line tools where the user actually has to type, in the model ui world, it's not really applicable.

tuananh2• 14 years ago

I've always confused about UI and UX. This is def. consider UX right?

mscarborough• 14 years ago

Yes, the UI is the mechanism that pops up the messaging, but the UX is the consideration of how the message will be used or misused by the user.

Ha, a terrible sentence. That's why I'm a back-end not a UX person :)

It's definitely a blurry line a lot of the time but having worked with a UX guy who was part of our design department, he definitely added a lot of value to the design process.

roryokane• 14 years ago

I think UI is a subset of UX. UI design is the choice, arrangement, and labeling of widgets on screens, whereas UX design also includes more abstract decisions such as whether to require that the user sign up before they start using your website or whether to provide permalinks to individual pieces of content or only have a link for collections. In this case, choosing labels of buttons on dialogue boxes is related to the UI, so it’s both UI design and UX design.