{"id":519139,"date":"2010-04-07T10:54:00","date_gmt":"2010-04-07T14:54:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/37signals.com\/svn\/posts\/2260-dangerous-ui-elements-and-the-ejector-seat-analogy"},"modified":"2010-04-07T10:54:00","modified_gmt":"2010-04-07T14:54:00","slug":"dangerous-ui-elements-and-the-ejector-seat-analogy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/519139","title":{"rendered":"Dangerous UI elements and the ejector seat analogy"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Opposite of Fitts’ Law<\/a> [via Berserk’s comment at the spiky button post<\/a>] asks:<\/p>\n

“What should we do with UI elements we don’t want users to click on? Like, say, the ‘delete all my work’ button?”<\/em><\/p>\n

The possible answers given: Make the button hard to click, offer an undo, and\/or show a confirmation alert dialog before proceeding.<\/p>\n

The piece also highlights Alan Cooper’s interesting “ejector seat lever” analogy:<\/p>\n

\"ejector<\/p>\n

Certainly gets the point across.<\/p>\n

Here’s an example of separating a dangerous element from a harmless one in Backpack<\/a>: The recently added add\/edit an event box that pops up in your features a trash can icon that deletes a post. It’s located far away from the Save\/Close actions.<\/p>\n

\"joshua_speaking\"<\/p>\n

In Basecamp<\/a>, the Delete\/Edit message links are close to each other. But if you do click on Delete accidentally, you have to confirm it:<\/p>\n

\"delete<\/p>\n

We go the dialog route when the action does irreversible damage to something you might care about a lot. Loss of a calendar event is unfortunate but easily reparable. But loss of a message with comments can cause significant pain.<\/p>\n

(Btw, one thing about the examples used in the Fitts’ Law post: There’s actually a setting in Gmail that lets you undo email sends up to 5 seconds after a message is sent<\/a>.)<\/p>\n

\n<\/img><\/a> <\/img><\/a>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Opposite of Fitts’ Law [via Berserk’s comment at the spiky button post] asks: “What should we do with UI elements we don’t want users to click on? Like, say, the ‘delete all my work’ button?” The possible answers given: Make the button hard to click, offer an undo, and\/or show a confirmation alert dialog […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7020,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-519139","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/519139","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7020"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=519139"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/519139\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=519139"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=519139"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=519139"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}