[thelist] Tip inspried (from: UI Standards)

[Madhu Menon]

At 01:30 PM 01-08-02, jon steele wrote:
>If you are going to place a "reset" button in a form, include a confirm
>box. Sometimes users may
>accidentally press this button (especially if your reset button is placed
>irregularly close to the
>submit button) and see their minutes of hard work disappear...

I'd like to politely differ with you on this. :)

There are only two possible uses of the Reset button:

1) Clear all the form values - Boom!
2) Reset the form values to any pre-filled values they had when the form
was loaded.


Now, in my experience with user testing, I have found:

* People know about option 1 but almost never want to nuke an entire form.
They usually want to change something small, like their name spelt wrong,
or a missing digit in their phone number. Think about it - how likely are
you to enter an entire form full of incorrect data? Doesn't happen.

* People (unless they're on this list) almost never know about option 2.
Not one lay person I've asked knew about the Reset button resetting form
values to the default ones. And since they don't know about it, it might as
well not exist.

Given both these scenarios, why have the Reset button at all? Its effects
are too catastrophic, and very few people ever need to take the extreme
step of nuking all they've just entered. If you argue that it could also be
used to reset form values, well, I've just explained how users don't know
about it anyway, so they won't use it.

Off with the Reset button, IMO.

<gripe>

I've always maintained that any UI element that could lead to dangerous
consequences should be isolated and not clubbed with more innocent UI
elements. It bugs me that the "Close window" button in Windows is so close
to the "minimise" and "restore" buttons. With only about .25" square
inches, it's easy to hit it when you really wanted to maximise the window.
In applications like browsers, that immediately quits, causing a lot of
irritation. It should have been in a corner by itself.

Similarly, many apps (especially email clients) map Ctrl-S to "Save" and
Ctrl-D to "delete". This is a recipe for disaster. Since S and D are right
next to each other on the keyboard, it's possible to accidently delete the
message you were writing instead of saving it. Ironic, isn't it? That two
functions diametrically opposite to each other could be grouped so close?
One saves, the other kills. I'm a power user, and I've often had my message
zapped as I was typing it (I habitually press Ctrl-S every 30 seconds) and
wondered "wtf just happened?"

</gripe>


Regards,

Madhu


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Madhu Menon
User Experience Consultant
e-mail: webguru at vsnl.net