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Toasts are bad UX

maxschmitt.me

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Re: Toasts are bad UX

#301

Post by adolph »

cowsandmilk wrote: post #57
lolinder wrote: post #46

I'm not convinced. Most of the argument seems to be that redundant UX is bad UX: > But by archiving the email, the email disappears from the list, which already implies the action was successful. > In this example, the button already includes a confirmation so the toast is entirely unnecessary. I vehemently disagree with the idea that just because you're already communicating something one way it's bad UX to include…

The unfortunate thing is they aren’t communicating the same thing. Taking the YouTube example, the checkboxes are 100% optimistic while the toast notification indicates that the request to the backend that was fired off asynchronously was successful. With the archive message example, it is the same thing. The message is removed from the list optimistically and the toast message is representing that the message was ac…

> I would much rather only get the toast if there is a failure to commit the change.

I would much rather the sequence of commands issued through the ui be a declarative state change queued until committed without bugging me about an error I can’t directly fix. Toast that backend chaos monkey, not me.

Re: Toasts are bad UX

#304

Post by remram »

hunter2_ wrote: post #186
hk__2 wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In this specific example you do have an Undo button: the checkbox itself. The issue here is that the checkbox doesn’t match the exact state it’s supposed to represent: if you check it, for a few seconds it’s checked but the video is not yet saved; if you uncheck it it’s not unsaved until the toast appear. If you repeatedly check/uncheck it you don’t know in which state you end up.

> In this specific example you do have an Undo button: the checkbox itself. That's false. The checkbox itself is not a viable undo button under any circumstances in this specific example (i.e., you accidentally clicked but have no idea where, and let's assume you have no idea of that particular checkbox's state prior to the accident). Any adjacent checkbox would have extremely similar plausibility for a user wonderin…

"Until the next action taken" doesn't solve your "accident" scenario either, where you likely smashed multiple buttons.

I don't think a toast or any confirmation feedback mechanism is supposed to replace a log or undo list.

Re: Toasts are bad UX

#305

Post by remram »

Terr_ wrote: post #194
perlgeek wrote: post #30

> The "Undo" button in the toast is unnecessary because the user can just click the checkbox again I disagree with this part, at least in general. Having an Undo is very good if you have accidentally clicked somewhere and don't know precisely where, and you don't know the application well enough to easily undo based on the message alone.

Yeah, I've encountered that in a few systems: I'm aware I accidentally just changed the wrong thing but I don't know which wrong thing, there are no clues. This is especially problematic when there's a chance nothing changed, but you can't be sure. To illustrate the problem with "perfect storm" example, suppose a your back is turned and a ball rolls of the shelf and hits the keyboard. Did anything change? What change…

This is particularly annoying on Gmail, where sometimes while you type in the search bar, a few of your keypresses will trigger keyboard shortcuts instead.

Did you just archive or delete a couple of unread emails? You may never know!

Re: Toasts are bad UX

#306

Post by jayd16 »

lolinder wrote: post #46

I'm not convinced. Most of the argument seems to be that redundant UX is bad UX: > But by archiving the email, the email disappears from the list, which already implies the action was successful. > In this example, the button already includes a confirmation so the toast is entirely unnecessary. I vehemently disagree with the idea that just because you're already communicating something one way it's bad UX to include…

"At best they're redundant" sounds pretty bad to me.

Re: Toasts are bad UX

#307

Post by hypercube33 »

layer8 wrote: post #82

For me the worse aspect is that they disappear (too quickly), and that they sometimes unnecessarily draw attention to themselves for success messages where you would trivially assume the action to succeed. The combination of the two is particularly vexing: Your attention gets unnecessarily diverted, but you don’t know if it wasn’t actually important because it disappeared too fast. Conversely, there’s also a variatio…

In android toasts are awful and pop over what I'm looking at. messages used to star wars ticker on the status bar which was out of the way and better

In windows balloon notifications have been replaced by toast notifications that block ux you're working on as well.

there is also a toast notifications panel but it's frankly ugly and awful compared to iOS and androids notifications visually.

I don't have a ton of experience with Linux or MacOS

Re: Toasts are bad UX

#308

Post by KennyBlanken »

layer8 wrote: post #82

For me the worse aspect is that they disappear (too quickly), and that they sometimes unnecessarily draw attention to themselves for success messages where you would trivially assume the action to succeed. The combination of the two is particularly vexing: Your attention gets unnecessarily diverted, but you don’t know if it wasn’t actually important because it disappeared too fast. Conversely, there’s also a variatio…

The absolute worst implementations of toasts are ones that actually block user interface elements which become invisible and un-clickable until the toast goes away.

Re: Toasts are bad UX

#309

Post by [deleted] »

jayd16 wrote: post #306
lolinder wrote: post #46

I'm not convinced. Most of the argument seems to be that redundant UX is bad UX: > But by archiving the email, the email disappears from the list, which already implies the action was successful. > In this example, the button already includes a confirmation so the toast is entirely unnecessary. I vehemently disagree with the idea that just because you're already communicating something one way it's bad UX to include…

"At best they're redundant" sounds pretty bad to me.

[deleted]

Re: Toasts are bad UX

#310

Post by d0gsg0w00f »

cellularmitosis wrote: post #206
cowsandmilk wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The unfortunate thing is they aren’t communicating the same thing. Taking the YouTube example, the checkboxes are 100% optimistic while the toast notification indicates that the request to the backend that was fired off asynchronously was successful. With the archive message example, it is the same thing. The message is removed from the list optimistically and the toast message is representing that the message was ac…

> I would much rather only get the toast if there is a failure to commit the change ... And being far on the screen from where I’m taking an action makes them even more of a distraction. But wouldn't this situation be even worse with a failure-only toast? A request timeout could happen 30 seconds after the fact. You're likely in a very different UI state at that point, and unless the error message is very specific, y…

I think it would be nice if the toast popped up and hid in a tray and you could expand it and see a toast history with timestamps.
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