I liked the "Every Click Counts!" concept as I believe it to be true in most situations in designing effective interfaces. However I do not believe this to be true when it comes to shutting down your computer.
I prefer to have 3 clicks,where the 3rd click gives you a chance to continue with your action or retreat - meaning cancel to be useful. Some people might disagree with me, however I believe it to be a necessity.
The whole thought behind Apple's 2 click approach was to speed up the process of shutting down. However what they had failed to take into consideration was people's tendency to 'miss' click on the odd occasion. I know that we all have experienced 'miss' clicking at some point when on a computer with Windows, Mac OS X, or Linux. It is one of those rare things that is natural for people that is applied to all operating systems.
I think it is this issue which has lead to Apple adding the possibility of a 3rd click.
The above screen shot illustrates a message box that appears once you click shut down in the pop-up menu displayed in Mac OS X Leopard section in Every Click Counts! by Mehdi.
The purpose of this is to give the chance to the users who may have accidently clicked shut down and do not want to, the chance to click cancel and stop them from seeing their Apple Mac shut down. What I believe to be ingenious is the fact that Apple has a 60 second count down. So those who in fact wanted to shut down there computer can just walk away and leave the count down to finish and 'hey-presto' your Apple Mac is shut down(thats your 2 click to shut down a Apple Mac). They have also taken into consideration for those who like to switch off their Apple Mac from the mains to abort the count down by simply clicking on shut down button and their Apple Mac shutting downs in a matter of seconds.
In my opinion I believe this is the perfect structure to have to shut down your computer. Its the best of both worlds. You have your 2 click or 3 click possibility, and it gives users the chance to cancel if they do not want to shut down which is critical. If Bill Gates is reading(which I doubt he is), he best be taking notes because this is another one of Apple's approaches he could do with plagiarizing! if it already hasn't been done by them - if my memory serves me right I do not believe Windows Vista incorporates this approach. Windows Vista users please let me know if I am mistaken. Thank you.
Advice for designers: Users are not perfect and it is important to take note that they are prone to make mistakes. Therefore in an actions that could be critical they should always have the option to cancel it.
3 comments:
Hey buddy, nice post... I dont think it's just Microsoft that's approached the matter this way, even different distributions of Linux have almost the same way. And as you said even Apple has the 3-click way to shut down the computer, but the logic behind it is different... (due to different task analysis perhaps)
Yes I agree that it must be there task analysis that has helped them get to a interesting conclusion.
By any chance does your macbook shut down like in the fist screen shot ? Do you get that messsage box to shut down or cancel to let the time run out ?
yep I do get that one as well, and I think it's pretty smart. let's say you're leaving office you just click and click and go. but if you do it by mistake you can just cancel it. But I think 60 seconds is a very long time though! 30 sec would be enough...
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