How would you handle users who don't read dial

Question

A recent article on Ars Technica discusses a recent study performed by the Psychology Department of North Carolina State University, that showed users have a tendency to do whatever it takes to get rid of a dialog box to get back to their task at hand. Most of them would click OK or yes, minimize the dialog, or close the dialog, regardless of the message being displayed. Some of the dialog boxes displayed were real, and some of them were fake (like those popups displayed by webpages posing as an antivirus warning). The response times would indicate that those users aren't really reading those dialog boxes.

So, knowing this, how would this effect your design, and what would you try to do about it (if anything)?

Answer 1

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 2

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 3

Wrong question. "How would you handle users" starts at the wrong end.

The correct question is "Given that dialogs distract users from the task at hand, what better alternatives exist?".

When working to achieve a goal or finish a task, we can distinguish three situations:

(1) The application comes to the conclusion that there is no action it can take which will make the user achieve the goal. Pop up a message, with one button to dismiss it. You don't care if the reader understands it, since the outcome doesn't matter anyway.

(2) There is only one action that you can take, or the alternatives are irrelevant to the user. Don't bother him at all.

(3) There are two or more ways of achieving the goal. Let the user choose between these. Do not formulate this as a yes/no question. (Vista offers this as a common dialog, to replace the message box.) If at all possible, do not make this an irreversible choice.

The exception to this rule is the situation where the user would expect a yes/no question. But really, if that is the case, then why isn't the question part of the normal workflow? Dialog boxes are outside the normal workflow.

Answer 4

Changing the wording and how the dialog works helps. For example, having OK/Cancel buttons tends to let users ignore most of the dialog. If you remove the normal buttons and replace these with wordier commands links, users are more likely to read each button because the 'quick, go away' option isn't available.

Answer 5

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 6

First of all, stupid should hurt, but usually it doesn't so...

The next best thing is including an icon that tries to convey the severity of the issue. Some percentage of those who won't read might change their habit if the dialog's icon seems ominous. Some percentage won't read it regardless.