Libraries make good sense
Since I live in Mississauga but work in Toronto, I am entitled to get a library card to the Toronto library system.
Which is nice, since each library branch has some good books that the
others don't have. A month ago I finally made the mistake of returning
books that I had borrowed from the Toronto library system to the
Mississauga library system, and I have been racking up daily fines for
those two books ever since then. When I asked about this at the
Mississauga Central library, the guy told me that books from the
Toronto system returned to Mississauga libraries are periodically
couriered to Toronto.
I can't possibly be the first person ever to make this easy-to-make mistake, so you'd expect that there would be such couriering system in place. Let's hope that the courier takes those books back before the Library Policeman comes to get me, instead of going after hippies who steal and vandalize books. I already got a letter in mail from them, telling me that if I don't pony up, the debt collectors will eventually handle this issue. Since it was nice and sunny today and I have nothing pressing to do until next week, I went to the city and made a long five-hour walk during which I first enjoyed some good dim sum and then went into three different branches of Toronto library, two of which I had never been in before. Perhaps a nice summer project for me might be to visit every branch of Toronto library. If I really did that, perhaps the local newspaper would publish my picture along with a little piece about my heroic civic deed.
The world should be designed to be stable and forgiving so that little mistakes would not matter. Not everybody seems to have received the memo, though. Bruce Schneier's post "Microsoft Vista's Endless Security Warnings" reminds us that constantly asking the user for confirmation does absolutely nothing useful but it teaches the users that they always have to perform one extra click to get anything done. And once you have performed 99 useless "yes, I really want to do this" clicks, you do it automatically the hundredth time when you are actually making a mistake.
The post also reminded me of an old usability gripe of mine. When you erase something such as a file or a recorded TV show, all modern and user-friendly computer software first asks you in a confirmation dialog if you really want to go on with the erase. If there is anything more useless than these confirmation dialogs, I can't think of it. When you are about to erase something that you would in reality like to keep, there are essentially two ways that this mistake can occur. The first one is that you don't realize that whatever you are erasing is actually important and you need it later. In this case the confirmation dialog is useless, because you won't realize your mistake until much later. The second one is that you intend to erase item A but accidentally click on an adjacent item B that you want to keep. In this case a confirmation dialog would save the say, assuming that it bothered to tell you that you are about to erase item B, because without this information, you won't realize that you made a mistake until it is done. But these dialogs never seem to provide this simple information.
And don't get me started about the Sony's SonicStage program that came with their MP3 player. After every "are you sure you want to erase?" dialog (and naturally, this dialog won't tell you what you are erasing) this sorry excuse for software pops up another confirmation dialog that simply asks "Are you really sure?" I wish I was joking, but I assure you that I am not.
It seems undeniable to me that confirmation dialogs are just a convenient way for the programmers to wash their hands of the user errors, and these dialogs are not even meant to provide any kind of real service to users. Don't blame us, you deleted your data and we gave you a confirmation dialog in which you answered that it was what you wanted to do, so perhaps you shouldn't do things that you don't want to do, hmmm?
I can't possibly be the first person ever to make this easy-to-make mistake, so you'd expect that there would be such couriering system in place. Let's hope that the courier takes those books back before the Library Policeman comes to get me, instead of going after hippies who steal and vandalize books. I already got a letter in mail from them, telling me that if I don't pony up, the debt collectors will eventually handle this issue. Since it was nice and sunny today and I have nothing pressing to do until next week, I went to the city and made a long five-hour walk during which I first enjoyed some good dim sum and then went into three different branches of Toronto library, two of which I had never been in before. Perhaps a nice summer project for me might be to visit every branch of Toronto library. If I really did that, perhaps the local newspaper would publish my picture along with a little piece about my heroic civic deed.
The world should be designed to be stable and forgiving so that little mistakes would not matter. Not everybody seems to have received the memo, though. Bruce Schneier's post "Microsoft Vista's Endless Security Warnings" reminds us that constantly asking the user for confirmation does absolutely nothing useful but it teaches the users that they always have to perform one extra click to get anything done. And once you have performed 99 useless "yes, I really want to do this" clicks, you do it automatically the hundredth time when you are actually making a mistake.
The post also reminded me of an old usability gripe of mine. When you erase something such as a file or a recorded TV show, all modern and user-friendly computer software first asks you in a confirmation dialog if you really want to go on with the erase. If there is anything more useless than these confirmation dialogs, I can't think of it. When you are about to erase something that you would in reality like to keep, there are essentially two ways that this mistake can occur. The first one is that you don't realize that whatever you are erasing is actually important and you need it later. In this case the confirmation dialog is useless, because you won't realize your mistake until much later. The second one is that you intend to erase item A but accidentally click on an adjacent item B that you want to keep. In this case a confirmation dialog would save the say, assuming that it bothered to tell you that you are about to erase item B, because without this information, you won't realize that you made a mistake until it is done. But these dialogs never seem to provide this simple information.
And don't get me started about the Sony's SonicStage program that came with their MP3 player. After every "are you sure you want to erase?" dialog (and naturally, this dialog won't tell you what you are erasing) this sorry excuse for software pops up another confirmation dialog that simply asks "Are you really sure?" I wish I was joking, but I assure you that I am not.
It seems undeniable to me that confirmation dialogs are just a convenient way for the programmers to wash their hands of the user errors, and these dialogs are not even meant to provide any kind of real service to users. Don't blame us, you deleted your data and we gave you a confirmation dialog in which you answered that it was what you wanted to do, so perhaps you shouldn't do things that you don't want to do, hmmm?
In some cases a programmer can turn the blame on the management or customer care for distorting the message from a customer. If a customer tells that erasing something by accident is too easy, the management or customer care may make a conclusion and design the solution by themselves without consulting the programmer. Then they tell the programmer that the customer wants a confirmation dialog without telling what the problem was in the first place.
Distorting the message and making design decisions at wrong place may apply mostly to software where programmers would never use that piece of software themselves and so they cannot figure out what the problem really was. However, I have another excuse for that MP3 player case. In some companies or some projects, the programmers are not allowed to ask question "is this really what the customer wants?" (or if they do, the question or an alternative solution is just neglected). They just have to implement whatever their manager brings to them. You can imagine the frustration when you know you could design and implement good software but you have to implement rubbish, and in the end you get the blame for poor customer satisfaction. Sometimes you even have to implement something that the customer has designed ("yes, I really want a confimation dialog here, and there can't possibly be a better solution").
Of course, very often the bad design choice was really made by a programmer. I'm just saying that sometimes it's someone else in the company or even the customer who makes the bad design decisions.
Posted by Rebyk | 3:14 AM
All the file-deleting software that I have ever used or seen and that had a confirmation message did in fact say what it was that I was deleting.
Posted by Vera | 4:42 AM
Part of the reason for confirmation dialogue boxes may also be in case you hit erase by mistake or hit the wrong command (regardless of file). This makes it harder to erase something because you hit an incorrect command.
Posted by Glaivester | 6:23 AM
Something I came across and thought you might be interested in:
Clergy in the Nation's Capital and Across the Country Pray for Lower Gas Prices
Posted by Jari | 9:14 AM
Actually it is very easy to delete something by accident. Delete-key is right to enter and I sometimes accidentally miss if i hit enter with "i-am-hitting-enter with-my-hand-almost completetly-relaxed-oops"-way
- Syltty
Posted by Anonymous | 9:53 AM