OK, I’m definitely being nicer with my title than Arstechnica’s Fake popup study sadly confirms most users are idiots. Regardless of the title, the study about user responses to error or warning dialog boxes is quite interesting. In the study, conducted by the Psychology Department of North Carolina State University, had the users perform a task which included the displaying a series of real and “fake dialog boxes“. Those users had a tendency to simply do whatever it took to get rid of the message, whether it meant clicking OK, yes or minimizing the window, regardless of the message being displayed.
From Arstechnica.com:
Of the 42 students, 26 clicked the OK button for the “real” dialog. But 25 clicked the same button for two of the fakes, and 23 hit OK on the third (the one with the status bar showing). Only nine of them closed the window—two fewer than had closed the real dialog. In all cases, a few of the users simply minimized the window or dragged it out of the way, presumably leaving the machine’s next user at risk.
I would definitely read the entire article if your interested, unfortunately the actual report is not going to be available until the next issue of Proceedings of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society is published.
One of the first thoughts that crossed my mind while reading this article, was how this effects me as a software engineer. Every day software engineers are faced with how to better their interfaces so that they work as well as possible for their users. However there are situations where you need to notify the user of something important, that the software may need a response from the user. Unfortunately, it seems, that most users see these as annoyances that get in the way of completing whatever task they are attempting to complete. I’ve even seen the most seasoned software developers do exactly what is described in the article.
So what is a software engineer supposed to do? Especially since most users won’t even pay attention to the dialog? Unfortunately, some programs have had to resort to purposefully making users go out of their way in providing their response, however I would argue that those same users continue to ignore the message and do whatever it takes to complete their task.
Either way, this study shows a continued conundrum for software engineers…