I'm designing the control panel of a booking app. Guests will be able to enter some reservations, that the host will have to confirm or reject. A reservation can be in one of these stages:
- Pending
- Confirmed or Rejected
- Deleted
When the host confirms or reject a reservation request, an email is automatically sent to the guest.
[edit:] A Pending reservation can be Confirmed, Rejected or Deleted; a Confirmed or Rejected one can only be Deleted.
I'm wondering if is it better to implement the UI of the form for the status change of the current reservation:
As a single select (or a series of radio buttons) that allows the host to select a different status for the current reservation
As a series of buttons that trigger a status change (like "Confirm reservation request" or "Reject reservation request")
The first solution allows to highlight the current status, display all the possible status a reservation can be and reduces accidental mistakes because it involves 2 clicks. The second solution highlights the fact that the host is triggering a really meaningful action, to which are bound several collateral effects.
I'd personally choose the first solution because it fits in the most common approach of changing the status of a generic thing, but I recognise that it is flawed because it do not stresses the fact that saving a new status for a reservation request is a very important action in this domain.