Re: [Usability]HIG should advise against Yes/No in confirmation alerts

[Gregory Merchan <merchan phys lsu edu>]

On Mon, Apr 28, 2003 at 05:08:54PM +0100, John Levon wrote:
> On Mon, Apr 28, 2003 at 11:33:20AM -0400, Sean Middleditch wrote:
> 
> > The HIG does cover this (last time I read thru it, anyways, which wasn't
> > long ago) - you should _never_ say "we should do this action, is that
> > ok?", but instead state "there is this condition/state, what do you want
> > to do?" and put the actions in the buttons.
> 
> Well, the example dialogs do not do this for the Primary Text.

Hmm. I hadn't looked at the images in a while. They certainly do ask
questions. The text of the HIG calls for declarative statements.

 "The primary text briefly summarizes the situation."

 "Primary Text. The primary text provides the user with a one sentence
  summary of the information or suggested action. This summary should
  concisely contain the essential details of the problem or suggestion."


> > The reasoning is pretty good.  The problem is that the meaning of Yes
> > and No is wholly dependent on the way the question is phrased.  If you
> > have "You have unsaved changes, save first? [Yes][No]" in one app, and
> > "You have unsaved changes, quit anyway? [Yes][No]" in another, the user
> 
> Hold on a minute, I wasn't arguing for using Yes/No, I thought we'd
> already agreed that sucked :)
> 
> I'm asking for a rationale for the "never ask a question" statement.

Failure.

My failure to think of a case where a question would be needed. :-)

Earlier, John Levon wrote:
> Not sure what you mean by this. What would your preferred "unsaved
> changes" on close dialog look like ?

I was going to say "like the one in the HIG," but I'd forgotten what that
looked like. What I had in mind was a declarative statement instead of
the question; "The document Foo contains unsaved changes." instead of
"Save changes to the document Foo before closing?"

To me, such a question should be answered with a yes or a no. For
reasons elaborated elsewhere, Yes and No buttons are bad. Thus the
question seems inappropriate to me.

I keep thinking of an alert as what you hear when you step on someone's
foot accidentally. When someone does this to me, I'll say, "You're on my
foot." I presume that the person did it accidently and is civilized enough
to get off my foot without being told to do so. To me, asking "Would you
please get off my foot?" would imply that the person did so intentionally.
It also implies an option where none exists. I don't think people like
to be ordered about, so I wouldn't use the imperative either. Once the
person realizes he's a klutz, he should feel bad enough already; there's
no need to make him feel like a subordinate. However, it seems I'm often
wrong about people. Willfully stepping on the feet of others is common.
Civilization is rare. Most people gladly follow orders and relish the
oppurtunity to disclaim responsibility.

Boy! Do I digress?

My point is that I don't think it's necessary to ask a question or
give orders; stating the problem should suffice. But, I'm probably wrong.


Cheers,
Greg