How would you handle users who don't read dialog boxes? [closed]

Answer 1

Firstly the use of color and icons should help give the user some visual awareness of the severity of the issue, red to convey exceptional, yellow to convey a warning, and white to convey informational.

Secondly the use of verbs on your dialog buttons gives the users a sense of what they are telling the system to do even if they don't read the text of the dialog.

Lastly, if you are interested in looking into a completely different notification paradigm check out the Information Bar or Notification Bar that is implemented in Firefox and Internet Explorer. StackOverflow uses the same type of mechanism to notify users when they have gotten a new badge.

The Information Bar is non-obtrusive and stays at the top of the screen waiting for user attention. I think it's a great design metaphor.

Here are a couple of implementation tutorials:

• C#
• JavaScript

Here is Microsoft's guidance on dialog design, it touches on the Information Bar concept as well.

Answer 2

A couple of suggestions

1. Only use boxes when absolutely necessary.
2. Always set the default option to the least dangerous option

Answer 3

I think you probably want to read this paper: "Impact of High-Intensity Negotiated-Style Interruptions on End-User Debugging", T. J. Robertson, Joseph Lawrance, and Margaret Burnett, Journal of Visual Languages and Computing 17(2), 187-202, April 2006.

It asked a similar question. The result was, let the user know you want their attention and then sit back and wait for the user to respond. Don't interrupt the user though, that's not what he or she wants.

Answer 4

Immediately Steve Krug's book Don't Make Me Think comes to mind.

In the design of dialog boxes, status messages back to user, etc. it is good to use iconography and color hints as to what the words actually say.

So highlight error messages red, warnings yellow, etc.

Answer 5

The [Lightbox](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lightbox_(JavaScript)) modal dialog seems an effective technique in some cases (web 2.0 derivation, but can be implimented in other contexts).

One other point: if you can forgo a dialog box for an Undo function (Gmail for one championed this concept as standard webapp behaviour) that's something to consider.

Answer 6

One thing you can do is have the OK button disabled for 3 seconds.

Firefox does this when you install an extension.

Edit: All right, some people find this annoying. I still think that about 1 second would be all right. It would suppress the instant-OK-clicking instinct that people (myself included) have, and force a double-take. Of course, even this will annoy people if your dialog is not something that they actually need to read.