Do you remember every time you forgot to save something and tried to quit some application, an alertbox popped out abruptly with a loud “bang” saying “you haven’t finished saving, are you sure you want to quit?” This is an excellent error-proof mechanism but in some cases, we can improve it with a subtler alert, making it more usable.
Here is a comparison. In one of our application we have a text submitting form with a character limit of 600. Unlike the traditional “you have reached 600″ alert, I tried to implement in a more user friendly way.
- Provide a live word count. If exceeded, it will turn into a negative value with red color the color I believe is a good metaphor for “stop”
- Take of the “600″ alert
- Disable the “submit” button after user exceed the limit, providing a soft alert
- While the textarea is blank, show a hint message “this is 600 limit only”
Usable vs unusalbe warning
So, how do you feel about it?
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woo, this blog is so technical!
excellent stuff, but i’m still more used to reading your writings in chinese
this is a good comparison between what we mostly see today, but what we should see more of. excellent use of red to show the user to stop. make sure that you keep color blinded people in mind. perhaps a use of changing size will show them that if they cannot see the red color, there are still errors.
good article!
Thanks for the reply. Yes, color blindness is an important concern, according to stats, more than 10% of the total population suffers from certain types of color-blindness. Great point.