Simon Willison’s Weblog

Nice Post :) P.s check out my swanky e-mail ;)

Tim Jackson - 11th November 2004 14:20 - #

Sad. In my experience, this type of thing sometimes happens (even with good UI designers), when there is some kind of architectural limitation (like, in a web app, not being able to persist information about where the user came from) that is deemed by developers or management to be too much work to change. Then a lame message has to be added in for the user...

MH - 11th November 2004 14:48 - #

Wow. Just... wow. That's truly frightening.

Dorothea Salo - 11th November 2004 15:13 - #

That's spectacularly poor.

Dave Child - 11th November 2004 15:21 - #

main issue is one of contradiction: first statement: have you saved your work? 1) Yes ("Yes, I have saved.. I don't need to save") 2) No ("I haven't saved, please save..") ----------------------- second statement: to go back and save your work click yes 1) Yes ("Oh wait, yes, I want to save") 2) No ("No, I don't want to go back, exit")

x - 11th November 2004 15:28 - #

A few buttons short of a full application, I'll be thinking.

Robert Wellock - 11th November 2004 15:33 - #

Two words: bad management.

This reeks of someone making demands in an area where they have no expertise.

Joe Grossberg - 11th November 2004 15:45 - #

... Oh. I thought it was a joke.

Simon Proctor - 11th November 2004 15:57 - #

That. Is. Too. Damn. Funny.

Keith - 11th November 2004 16:14 - #

Keith, that's not funny, it's sad. But I wonder what application Simon uses then...

Rob Mientjes - 11th November 2004 16:21 - #

I won't name the application, but it's something I found on one of the University computers - it's a wizard-style thing for planning your career options. At the end it says "Made with Macromedia" which I imagine means Macromedia Director.

Simon Willison - 11th November 2004 16:32 - #

um...wow. I will be so bold as to admit that I was confused. It could very well be that I get confused easily, but I don't think so. So you're saying that this is a real life application? For a University? And not a joke? Really boggles the mind - the designer may have been tired...

teli - 11th November 2004 17:25 - #

I guess one of the goals of this application is to learn to pay attention when reading ;-)

Etienne - 11th November 2004 19:18 - #

Uhn. Had to read that three times before understanding. At least I think I do. Extremely confusing. Funny and sad.

Roger Johansson - 12th November 2004 08:11 - #

That's scary, and true this kind of thing can slip past us all. Oh, I still don't get the message after reading it twice. Ouch!

Egor Kloos - 12th November 2004 10:14 - #

OK, so maybe the ‘usability stuff’ is not so great, but at least they took the time to specify spiffy circular buttons with 3D text and carefully rendered drop-shadows.

If the buttons had been labeled ‘Don’t save’ and ‘Go back’, the text would not have fitted in the buttons.

Damian Cugley - 12th November 2004 11:11 - #

A minor change would have been to label the buttons 'Save', and colored it green, and 'Exit' and colored it red. And of course, swapped their positions!

Andrew - 12th November 2004 15:32 - #

Reminds me of one of those lengthly tests that begin with "read everything before beginning", followed by 4 pages of misc. tasks, ending with "do nothing but sign your name".

Yvonne Adams - 12th November 2004 15:35 - #

Actually, you shouldn’t colour buttons red. Apple experimented with using red for the Shutdown menu command in the earliest version of Mac OSâand found that the colour drew the userâs mouse like a magnet, the exact opposite of what you would want.

Also, couldnât red suggest âwoah! stop and fix the problemâ whereas green means âitât fine, go ahead and quitâ? I think this confusion is why Apple use âDonât Saveâ in their quit-confirmation dialogue box.

My least favourite alert in the application we are working on now happens when you cancel a particularly long-winded wizard. It reads âAre you sure you want to cancel? You will lose all changes you have made. (OK) (Cancel)â. In this case OK means cancel and Cancel means cancel Cancel... Argh!

Damian Cugley - 13th November 2004 22:39 - #

yikes. I've seen some pretty bad UI design, but that is particularly atrocious. It took me about three reads to figure out which button to hit. Had I actually been using this application, I definitely would have made the wrong choice initially.

seth - 15th November 2004 03:13 - #

Shouldn't there be a 3rd button? One that turns off your system.

Geoff - 16th November 2004 00:56 - #

Lovely buttons though.

zedzdead - 20th November 2004 23:20 - #

That's sad. Really sad. Have You Saved Your Work? Yes → back to the doc... Riiiiiiiiight.

Mathias Bynens - 21st November 2004 11:26 - #

I guess they should just change it to "Do you need to save your work?"

David Engel - 23rd November 2004 21:36 - #

Ouch :/

foosel - 20th December 2004 22:56 - #

this is a freaky comment box, it doesnt seem to have automatic new line breaks so it displays everything as one whole long line

pikachu - 12th January 2005 22:23 - #