UX question: is better to have “serious delete” or have “trash”

Question

I am developing an application that allows for a user to manage some individual data points. One of the things that my users will want to do is \"delete\" but what should that m

Answer 1

I think you pretty well summarized the pros and cons for the trash model:

• Pro: Overall, better for the user.

• Con: Overall, easier for the developer.

For a usability specialist like myself, it’s a no brainer. As far as I’m concerned developers are supposed to work hard to make life easier for users. Frankly, until web apps have Undo capabilities like trash, I don’t think we can consider them usable. Time that web apps catch up to 1984.

A few other details:

• Another advantage of the trash model is the capacity to eliminate the need for confirmation message in most cases. The vast majority of the time, the user is deleting something intentionally, so putting an extra step in with a confirmation message is usually adding work for them. Worse, they get in the habit of smacking OK quickly, which generalizes to other confirmations they really better read. See http://alistapart.com/articles/neveruseawarning.

• Part of the beauty of the trash metaphor is that it suggests to user that deleting is not permanent. Like a physical trash can, objects can be retrieved. If you feature the trash can obviously enough on your page (so users realize they can open it), and include an image of the trash can as an icon next to the Delete menu item, that should be enough to indicate that deleting doesn’t destroy, but rather moves things to the trash.

• It’s probably acceptable to destroy the oldest deletions in the trash if there are performance considerations. That is once again consistent with the trash can metaphor: users can anticipate that sooner or later “someone” is going to empty the trash. I don’t think users will care if the trash never empties. If they need to truly destroy something sensitive, you can provide an explicit procedure for it (e.g., deleting something that’s already in the trash).