Irreversible changing of state

Question

I am working on a UI for a workflow and task management system.

Each task can be in one of three states:

• new
• in progress
• complete

The task is edited in a form which has Save/Cancel buttons. It also includes a check box which states “Complete”. Once the task is saved with “Complete” being checked, a couple of things happen:

• The task’s status is changed to “Complete”;
• The task is locked from further editing;
• The next task is activated.

The issue is that after saving the task as complete, it is irreversible. The checkbox doesn't fit here because it implies you can change its value later.

Any ideas for a good way to convey the irreversibility of the action?

Side notes:

• The only related question I could find were Popup for a check box and How to design a change state action, but they don't help in this case.
• Using radio buttons or a dropdown selector wouldn't do the job for the same reason.
• I know that having irreversible actions in a system is bad practice, but unfortunately, this cannot be changed in the current system.

Answer 1

You might think about confirming the user's action to complete the task after they've clicked the button. For example, using a lightbox style overlay:

^{download bmml source – Wireframes created with Balsamiq Mockups}

Of course you could choose to use another treatment than the lightbox, the main thing being the user has a confirmation that completing the task is irreversible, but also once the user has learned this, there's an option to hide the confirmation.

Answer 2

Here's an idea I had. You can help figure it out by commenting, or suggest any of your own with a separate answer.

Instead of the checkbox, add a button labeled “Complete Task”. Upon clicking it, it would turn into a simple label stating “Completed”. The button would convey a feeling of taking an action, and also committing to its consequences.

The only (big) problem I see, besides being unconventional, is that if the user regrets clicking the button before she saves the task, she needs to click Cancel, which will also discard all her other changes.

Answer 3

We have 3 actions that can be done with task

• save - which saving any changes
• cancel - which just delete any changes in current edit session
• done/complete - which ending a whole task

So, how about making 3 buttons. Completing task button could have a label like "Save&Complete". And after clicking message box like {Serg}. In fact "Complete&Save" button will do two thing from list above: Save, Done/complete.

Answer 4

I would go for something similar to what ux.stackexchange.com does on their home page. They show open questions normally. Solved questions will have 'Answers' tab highlighted and closed question will be greyed out so that one can make out that there is no action for this task.

If you are talking about a dashboard and task status are updated as and when they are executed automatically, then I would highlight the entire row for the task whose status has just got changed.

Edit: Forgot to mention that actions will happen on click of the row rather than a separate button (which will work on selected row via checkbox), and colors will indicate which actions are possible on that row