Hot answers tagged warnings
21
Annoying user experiences are broken user experiences, well intentioned or not.
Why the struggle in the workflow? Why do the users (think they need to) turn off security? Can they do something they aren't otherwise able to do?
Why shouldn't they do what they do? Should they be able to turn off the security? Is there a permissioning solution?
...
20
What about reseting to the safe behavior after an appropriate interval?
For example, cars have some features that you are allowed to leave 'on' across restarts, but others (e.g. cruise control, seat heaters) must be re-enabled every time you start the car.
In your system you could re-enable the security measures when they log out, if they're really that ...
17
You really have but one option: accept that your users are human, and likely not to read your warning. Making it bigger or more annoying won't help you force people to read your warning, it will just make your software more annoying to use.
Instead, you should deal with the real issue: there is no undo! In my view, that is the usability issue here.
I'd ...
17
I would recommend clearly going with an approach which clearly calls out the the potential impact of the action they are going to provide and require them to provide a second level of confirmation. The second level of confirmation can be perhaps done by using a checkbox (like how you have in terms and condition boxes) and then only enabling the delete or ...
13
This may be a case of the more you make users work, the less they try. I believe when confronted with a task, like trying to understand some content on a page, users do a quick estimate on whether the effort will be worth it or not.
Too often we present users with extensive content and clicking just to tell them something that they already know or don’t ...
11
The way I read it the free input will filter a list dynamically as the user types. In the case that a user enters something that doesn't match any of the items that are being filtered then the appropriate place to notify of this is where the user currently has their focus, namely where the filtered results are listed.
Simply switch out the list of possible ...
9
Everything you've described is addressed by the principle of least privilege.
If there is no legitimate reason for your software to start as a privileged user, have it outright refuse to start (or) demand a configuration that permits it to drop privileges once started. This is courteous behavior, as it prevents your software from becoming an attack surface ...
7
Other than the obvious answer: "re-write your app so it supports common user actions better" You could try manipulating the browser history using new development techniques (usually outside the scope of a UX answer). Otherwise, a JavaScript alert will only fire after the users have tried to leave the page for any reason, which might be confusing to them. ...
7
I see three main approaches:
Hide the flow.
Display "service not available" page on selecting the flow.
Disable the flow with some indication (tooltip, information ("i") icon).
There are advantages and disadvantages to all approaches.
The main drawback to the first is that if someone comes to the site expecting to find the flow but can't see it then ...
6
As far as I remember, this is because of well-known Hot Coffee Lawsuit against McDonalds.
Judge Robert H. Scott who presided over this case stated:
...knowing the risk of harm,
the evidence and testimony would indicate that
McDonald’s consciously made no serious effort to
warn its consumers by placing just the most simple,
adequate warning on ...
5
Agree that it is better to have an undo mechanism. If that is not possible in your case,
including informative text in the button may increase chances that your user would read it since they have to click it (although it would very useful to actually run a usability test for your scenario). If you could customize the message and show extra text if existing ...
5
One way to guide the user would be to style the tags as soon as the users finish typing a tag, thus indicating that the application/system has recognized their tag.
For example, when the user types in the tags that you have entered for this question i.e. "user-behavior", "tags", "warnings", this is what people typically do.
Instead, try the following. ...
3
As I understand it, your problem is not with managing their input of the data, but rather in giving them important information about their choices.
For that I would suggest avoiding any method that looks similar to a validity check of input data, as this will likely confuse a person.
As this seems to be important information with possibly serious ...
3
Leslie M said
Why do the users (think they need to) turn off security?
Users are lazy. Period.
Setting up security right often is not a trivial task so users tend to avoid the hassle:
"Why should I get involved in how to set up my security right when the software runs just fine with security disabled?"
So, basically, there's a simple cost-benefit ...
3
One of the best things to use is Google frame to avoid this kind of problems but if the user is still stuck with IE6/7 with no alternative, it should take over the entire page, take a look at basecamp and apple cloud
similar question:
3
If you want to force the user to read it (and surely annoy the users) you can do the following:
Make a Inputbox and only proceed, when the users has typed a summary from your message.
Example:
Your message here (about overwriting the config)
To proceed type the following in the textbox:
I understand, that going further will overwrite my configuration and ...
2
André is perfectly right, always try to add an undo. In case of removing files, don't delete them permanently. Move them to trash(from where they can be restored), or rename them to config.old.ini or something similar. Find ways to provide for recovery from errors.
Most often warning does not fit in to the users current action schema. If I'm creating a ...
2
+1 to ChrisF's answer, but my comments became to long to write there:
You should make use of either ChrisF's approaches #1 (hide the flow) or #3 (disable the flow with some indication, i.e. tootip), but it depends on what your users expect to see. If you don't they would miss the flow that they don't have access to or if they never knew it existed, then ...
2
The last sentences sounds like when I was in the navy and had to do my gun exam. You got a form with 10 questions, and you kept on writing the form until you got all answers correct. That correct form was filed and could be used in the event that I did something wrong since I "knew" what I was doing - referencing the 10 of 10 correct answers.
But apart from ...
2
I think the most important thing is to not use standard controls, and instead make it a distinct experience that's directly tied on the task at hand.
Say the user wants to delete a drive. So force them to actually do an interaction that emulates deleting a drive. As a random top-of-my-head example, have them drag an icon representing their files into a ...
2
Typically in this situation applications will present a dialog that looks something like this:
download bmml source – Wireframes created with Balsamiq Mockups
This is in line with your intuition that a warning that "going back" is unsupported behavior is the best UX to provide in this situation.
Note that it may be possible to support the back ...
2
I want to challenge your descision to revoke their right to any kind of technical support for a service in exchange for being allowed access to beta or in-development features of said service.
How are you going to evaluated those features if you do not have user feedback?
Secondly, why don't you give them access to technical support? Is it for a principle ...
1
I've found that the vast majority of the time simple tried & true active form validation techniques, such as JohnGB and Vijay proposed above, bring the best results in grabbing the users attention to potential issues without much distraction.
What's nice about those techniques is that they can be subtle enough to not ruin the flow of a form, but stand ...
1
As curious_cat pointed out, you should avoid anything that requires interaction for the user to continue (message boxes, overlays etc). To avoid having the user seek the field in the form, you could simply place the warning label next to it as others have pictured.
For warnings, I would use a yellow label and the universal warning symbol (triangle, ...
1
While what you have linked is good, it is no longer the norm these days.
The standard is to highlight the data entered and place a message right below/beside the control in which the data was entered.
Take a look at the example here
Enter an invalid email address and you will see the alert. as below:
1
I look forward to the day the lids on coffee cups include a heat-sensitive "HOT COFFEE" warning label that disappears as the coffee cools to (safe) drinking temperatures, the way the maple syrup bottles include a "HOT" label that appears once you've heated them up in the microwave.
Sadly, I suspect it would have to be limited to re-usable cups rather than ...
1
In the context of most software, what you're doing sounds perfectly reasonable, certainly a good idea even. I do this exactly that with software I've written that needs to create mysql accounts, etc, principle of least privileged user as mentioned by someone else.
However, it sounds like you're talking about controlling minecraft servers
Personally, I own ...
1
Enforcing something on users that they don't want is the most annoying thing a developer or a system can do. I will assume this is a hobby project and you feel you have been called to decide on behalf of your users. This usually comes from developers/admins with autocrative tendencies - I've met a lot of them in my professional career. Most of the time it ...
1
1) What Girish said would be my first port of call
2) How many people are doing the 'wrong' thing? Maybe you need to reconsider whether not allowing spaces as separators is the best option? How many people are actually using multi-word tags compared to the number of people making mistakes? Can you support the multi-word tag folk in other ways (hyphens ...
1
Studies have shown that users perceive images better than text... maybe show a flash animation of the destruction happening and also maybe convey the emotion more by showing a horrified facial expression. Something similar to this is those highway signs on curves that show a truck in the process of tipping over... much more effective than the word "Curve" ...
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