I'm using a checkbox for a setting in a mobile app that has a one-time effect: that is, you turn it on, it has the effect once, and then resets itself to off. I'd like to know if there's a better style of control, or a visual metaphor I can use to make it clearer that the behaviour is not like a normal checkbox (where you check it and it stays on).
If you're having trouble understanding what the control actually does, here's some more background. This app shows a dialog with a list of possible actions to take, and lets the user create rules. If the rules match the current situation, one action is taken automatically and the dialog isn't shown. In case the user creates a very broad rule they later want to override with a more specific rule, there's a "manual override" control that turns off evaluating rules for the next time the rules would run. This means the dialog will show again, with the matching action highlighted, so the user can use the same workflow to create a new rule, instead of having to go through the external "rules editor" workflow.
One alternative I've already considered is the slidey switch control (what Android calls a Switch
), but it has the same problem: users wouldn't normally expect it to switch itself off. If you're going to suggest a switch or checkbox, make sure to justify why it's not a problem to break the user's expectation of persistence. I'll try to make the behaviour clear in the text label in any case, but the right affordance can be worth n words for large values of n.