How to handle success feedback message for negative setting preferences?

Question

For any settings/preference related changes (positive), we show a success message. We are using "success message text with light green box with green tick" placed on the top of the page for this. Our settings offer ability for user to disable one important feature. Though this feature is very important to business, we still respect user control and allow them to disable it with simple yes/no radio button.

Now after disabling it how to show the success message?

• Its a negative action and still showing it in same green box with tick?
• Should any other color be used to denote this?
• Or breaking the consistency is okey here and it can be shown in a simple popup instead of using any earlier style?

Answer 1

I think consistency is important here. If a user performed a deliberate action to disable a feature and that action was performed successfully, you should present confirmation with the same 'success' styling that you use elsewhere. That would mean using the "green box with tick" that is described in the question. The purpose of the feedback in this situation is to say "OK, that worked", not "Uh oh, you just did something bad".

Answer 2

You could keep your success message the same style/colour as to the user they performing the same task. OR what you could do is employ a strategy which highlights the disadvantages of disabling the setting instead. Facebook do this when you go to disable your account, instead of just disabling, you get asked if you are REALLY sure, they then display a list of your friends and say things like "they will miss you" etc. Try and think of all the benefits to your user by keeping the setting and displaying these in an extra step between the user selecting to disable them and successfully doing do.

Might also be worth reading up on dark patterns.