What to do when a seemingly final action is not the final action

Question

I'm trying to solve this simple workflow. For context:

• A user accesses a page to read a document
• The user can suggest changes on that document, or not
• In either case, the user has to click a button that says "Submit review..."
• After this, they see a modal confirmation explaining what is going to happen.

In all my tests, users were able to understand that they have to click on this button because there is instructional text that says "Once you have finished please click Submit review... for confirmation."

They all understood it, but, I still feel is not really clear that this is not the final action, since they will have a confirmation modal. In fact, all of them said that it was good to have a confirmation modal before the final action, but none of them were expecting it.

How might I make this simpler?

Answer 1

Your user tests shows, that the users are understanding, that they have to click the "submit review" button and that they appreciate the fact that there is a modal after that action.

Usually modals are not announced. E.g. if you have a delete button and there is a confirmation modal the delete button will not be different from any other button.

You say nothing about your users having missed an information or a hint that a modal is displayed first. Therefore you should probably not search for a solution to a non problem.

Answer 2

Add the open window icon to the button:

Icon link