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Ok-Cancel versus Cancel-Ok

factorio.com

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Re: Ok-Cancel versus Cancel-Ok

#91

Post by fishtoaster »

smichel17 wrote: post #10
scrollaway wrote: post #6

HN folks will appreciate the entire Factorio blog. They are super open about the design of their game and it's full of micro-postmortems. https://www.factorio.com/blog/ Also, if you're reading this, you are in a demographic that is likely to absolutely love Factorio. Go buy it, it's 20 eur/usd, you won't regret it. Some call it "Programming: The Game".

> Some call it "Programming: The Game". This is actually why I haven't bought it (yet). When I have the urge to program something, I think I'd rather put that towards building something real than playing Factorio.

I love factorio because it's the most like programming without actually being programming. Opus Magnum is a game in a similar vein that came highly recommended, but I never got _that_ into because it _is_ actually programming: there's an instruction set that you program visually. Factorio, on the other hand, is closer to an RTS. Except whenever you find yourself doing something tedious, you can just put in a little more work to automate it and never have to do it again. It's the automation aspect of programming, but no actual programming.

Re: Ok-Cancel versus Cancel-Ok

#92

Post by Obi_Juan_Kenobi »

santix wrote: post #20
scrollaway wrote: post #6

HN folks will appreciate the entire Factorio blog. They are super open about the design of their game and it's full of micro-postmortems. https://www.factorio.com/blog/ Also, if you're reading this, you are in a demographic that is likely to absolutely love Factorio. Go buy it, it's 20 eur/usd, you won't regret it. Some call it "Programming: The Game".

I was surprised at the minimum requirements. I don't know if I'm not up to date with current games, but from the style of it I thought it would be much lighter.

A typical game will simulate tens of thousands of entities at once, and it all needs to be updated. You can't cull by LOS because the simulation is running everywhere. There's a lot of what amounts to collision checking, where robot arms are looking for items to pick up or space to drop them off.

It's still quite performant. Some of the larger factories people have built are truly stunning in scale, yet can run at 30+ updates a second. People can host games with hundreds of players with relative ease.

At the beginning of the game, even quite modest computers will have no trouble with it, but that's not a reflection of what the game is about. Big factories are much of the point.

Re: Ok-Cancel versus Cancel-Ok

#93

Post by Stratoscope »

doh wrote: post #83
Stratoscope wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder if they are really sure about that. What do you think, no or yes?

Well, it convinced me at that time, so now I force all our designers to structure it also as Cancel-Ok. On the surface it makes sense to me, but that doesn't mean it's correct. So I go with Cancel-Ok, but holding this conviction very loosely.

This is one of those things where there is no wrong or right answer. We are just trying against all odds to find something that will help users feel comfortable and make the right choice.

My philosophy used to be to follow the native platform convention, so on Mac it's Cancel-OK, on Windows or Linux it's OK-Cancel. Seems simple, do what people are used to.

But what about a web app that someone uses on Mac at work and Windows at home, or vice versa? Do they expect the app to work the same wherever they use it, or do they expect it to follow the different native platform conventions?

My mind is spinning.

Re: Ok-Cancel versus Cancel-Ok

#94

Post by gsich »

throwawayjava wrote: post #76
jaysonelliot wrote: post #19

This has been a debate for as long as I've been a UX designer (mid '90s), and probably much longer. Ultimately, the answer about this UX style is very much the same as a question about writing style—there's no objectively right answer, but you have to be consistent. For example, you can pick up any number of style books from Strunk & White to the Chicago Manual of Style and get different "right" answers about writing…

> So the answer from this veteran UX designer would be: Use whichever placement your users are going to be the most familiar with, but whichever you choose, be 100% consistent with the choice you make. What are your thoughts on how smartphones might impact this left vs. right debate? The button on the right is accessible without using just one hand (tapping with thumb while holding in palm), but I need two hands to t…

I don't know if handedness does has much influence to such clumsy devices like smartphones. It's not comparable to writing text by hand, where much greater precision is required.

Re: Ok-Cancel versus Cancel-Ok

#95

Post by tzs »

latexr wrote: post #89

On macOS I have turned on the setting that lets one tab through all controls (System Preferences → Keyboard → Shortcuts → All controls). When a “Cancel OK” dialog appears, “OK” is the default choice (in blue) but Cancel is the highlighted one[1], presumably because it’s the first option. This is incredibly convenient because ↵ will activate “OK”, while pressing the space bar will activate “Cancel”. One gets used fast…

> System Preferences → Keyboard → Text → All controls

It's System Preferences → Keyboard → Shortcuts → All controls on my Mac (10.13.5)

Re: Ok-Cancel versus Cancel-Ok

#96

Post by sjwright »

tvmalsv wrote: post #81
userbinator wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually "mirror the action verb" surprises/confuses me even more than "OK" "Cancel", since the latter are standard and almost expected, whereas anything other than a positive/negative response feels unexpected. It's like the real-life equivalent of asking someone a yes/no question --- you're expecting a yes/no answer. In fact, I'd say this is even clearer, putting the question at the end and immediately following it…

I agree. When I initiate an action like "delete" and a dialog pops up, my mind is already assuming it's asking the question "Are you sure?" regardless of what the text says, and my eyes are just scanning for a "Yes" or "No". I would give preference to it being on the left (probably because "yes or no" is so ingrained... when's the last time you heard someone say "Answer me, it's a simple no or yes answer!"), but, rea…

When you initiate action like delete, you might be thinking “yes/no” in the moment, but you couldn’t possibly argue that “cancel/delete” is less intuitive or breaks flow.

And we don’t always react to confirmations instantly. What if you’re distracted away, or you suddenly second guess your decision and perform some auxiliary research? Or what if you have more than one dialogue box on the screen at a time? From a UX standpoint, it is far safer to repeat the verb rather than use a generic.

To be frank, the only reason why I could imagine using generics is laziness.

Re: Ok-Cancel versus Cancel-Ok

#97

Post by userbinator »

jacobolus wrote: post #78
userbinator wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually "mirror the action verb" surprises/confuses me even more than "OK" "Cancel", since the latter are standard and almost expected, whereas anything other than a positive/negative response feels unexpected. It's like the real-life equivalent of asking someone a yes/no question --- you're expecting a yes/no answer. In fact, I'd say this is even clearer, putting the question at the end and immediately following it…

Please force the reader to directly click an action verb. It is much easier to skip over text (even text that comes immediately before) misinterpret the dialog, and click the wrong button when using generic button labels "yes" and "no". And more generally, before disregarding industry best practices and findings from research literature and implementing something based on ad-hoc personal hunches, make sure you run so…

industry best practices and findings from research literature

That's the cop-out answer I get whenever I ask about unnecessary and infuriating UI changes. It has only given rise to increasingly dumbed-down, stupifying interfaces.

Re: Ok-Cancel versus Cancel-Ok

#98

Post by mcbits »

userbinator wrote: post #53
JonathonW wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Ok" for a change (that's described in the body of the dialog's text) is... okay, I suppose. But it's better to mirror the action verb for your confirmation button, because users don't necessarily read the text you present them with. So, instead of this: Delete xyz.jpg? -------------------------- The file 'xyz.jpg' will be permanently deleted. -------------------------- [ OK ] [ Cancel ] You have: Delete xyz.jpg? ---…

Actually "mirror the action verb" surprises/confuses me even more than "OK" "Cancel", since the latter are standard and almost expected, whereas anything other than a positive/negative response feels unexpected. It's like the real-life equivalent of asking someone a yes/no question --- you're expecting a yes/no answer. In fact, I'd say this is even clearer, putting the question at the end and immediately following it…

A problem with Yes/No (and OK/Cancel, etc.) is that one program will ask

    Unsaved changes will be lost. Save your changes first?
and another program will ask

    Unsaved changes will be lost. Are you sure?
Or within a single program, "Yes" will be the safe option everywhere except one place where it's the dangerous option because nobody thought about that.

If the user is exposed to one convention 90% of the time, the other one will always cause some confusion and feel sloppy.

Re: Ok-Cancel versus Cancel-Ok

#99

Post by cabaalis »

scrollaway wrote: post #6

HN folks will appreciate the entire Factorio blog. They are super open about the design of their game and it's full of micro-postmortems. https://www.factorio.com/blog/ Also, if you're reading this, you are in a demographic that is likely to absolutely love Factorio. Go buy it, it's 20 eur/usd, you won't regret it. Some call it "Programming: The Game".

I lost at least a week of productivity after buying factorio.

Re: Ok-Cancel versus Cancel-Ok

#100

Post by tzs »

There was a widely used program on Windows back in the 95 days that on the nag dialog asking free users to get the paid version would random switch between the two orders. The idea was to keep people from unconsciously clicking through that dialog.

I think this was WinZip, but am not certain.

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