

Usability Tip: Use Verbs as Labels on Buttons - puns
http://www.usabilitypost.com/post/11-usability-tip-use-verbs-as-labels-on-buttons

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HendrikR
This 'Usability Tip' is well-known and nevertheless absolutely true. See this
document for further reading:

[http://developer.apple.com/documentation/UserExperience/Conc...](http://developer.apple.com/documentation/UserExperience/Conceptual/AppleHIGuidelines/index.html)

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edw519
I have always extended this with the acronym "VAN". (I remind myself that
programming is like driving a van.)

Verb Adjective Noun

"Enter New Customers" better than "Custs"

"Pay All Bills" better than "Accts Payable"

"Download Changed SKUs" better than "SKU Update"

You get the idea.

Not just for buttons, but for everything, even the stuff the user never sees.

So simple, yet so elusive.

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HendrikR
Totally Agree. ;) The simple ratio: Tell your users what is going to happen
after his or her action. This minimizes misunderstandings and frustrations.

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JeremyChase
I totally disagree; the OSX box is even more confusing. The problem is that
you are performing two actions at the same time. First is closing the file and
second is saving he file. For the box to be clear both issues have to be
clear.

TextEdit: _Save_ \- Clearly this saves the document _Cancel_ \- I think this
cancels the save, but does it close the file too? Not sure. _Don't Save_ \- Ok
"Don't Save", but then what? Does this close the document or is it the same as
Cancel? Wait, I'm not 100% sure what cancel does.

The WordPad message is a little clunky because you have to read what the box
in order to know you are saving. However, once you read the box _Yes_ / _No_
is very clear, _cancel_ still leaves a bit to be desired.

If you really want to be clear the buttons should say: _Save_ , _Abandon
changes_ , _Go Back_

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axod
"Cancel - I think this cancels the save, but does it close the file too? Not
sure."

Obviously, it "cancels" - eg puts things back into the state before you
clicked 'quit'.

'don't save' quits, but does not save. You did click on 'quit' after all.

Personally I think that's pretty clear.

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Hexstream
I'm wondering if making the dialog text even more contextual would be better?

"Do you want save the changes you made to the document "Test Doc" before
quitting?

Quit without Saving / Don't Quit / Save and Quit"

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mynameishere
No!

The Apple Dialog has the same information repeated FOUR times.

#1 Do you want to save the changes you made in the document "test doc"

#2 Your changes will be lost if you don't save them.

#3 Don't Save

#4 Save

FOUR times I am told what I'm doing, "Saving". Yeah, each iteration has a
little more information added to it. "Saving _what_ document?" "Saving is
important _why_?" "What is the _alternative_ to saving?" Thanks for the slowly
unfolding tutorial there...

Okay. Listen, the MSFT dialog works like this. It's a boolean. It's very short
and simple: The answer is "yes" or "no". The user gets used to this yes/no
format.

Save? yes/no

Print? yes/no [<\-- doesn't really exist]

Restore settings? yes/no

The consistency of this reduces one's need to actually read-and-process-and-
understand what are extremely simple questions inherently.

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rkts
The problem is that users typically read as little as is necessary to figure
out what to do next--and very often, not even that much. Since the Windows
dialog must be read entirely to be understood, it's more likely to be
misinterpreted. E.g., a user may accidentally press "close," see the dialog,
and think, "No, I didn't mean to close"... and then lose all their work.

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mynameishere
_read as little as is necessary_

Exactly. The Windows dialog is very, very short. The apple dialog is a
miniature tutorial on the purpose and consequences of this thing called
"save".

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rkts
The Mac dialog has a lot of text, yes, but it requires less reading to be
understood, which, empirically, is what seems to matter most.

If you watch people use your software, one thing you notice right away is that
many of them don't read ANY text. When a dialog shows up, they go straight to
the buttons and click whichever one seems right--even if they don't know what
the dialog is asking! It sounds crazy, but it's what people do.

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mynameishere
I'm not sure where the confusion is.

#1 User presses "Save".

#2 Is met with "Yes/no".

#3 Presses "yes".

Where am I confused? I'm getting downmodded by the mac-bots as usual, but the
purposeless verbosity remains purposeless as far as I can see...

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puns
The user doesn't press save in #1 -- the user exits the app. If the user
pressed save, they would be met with a save dialog, which is something
completely different.

What the article discusses is a dialog the user didn't expect. Something pops
up and they have to figure out what it is. Now you can make the user read the
message, or you can make the window scannable by sticking actions on button
labels. Reading the buttons is much faster than reading the sentence above.
Sure, you're gonna save like 2 seconds of the user's time, but these 2 seconds
are going to be multiplied by thousands in the course of the user using the
app or OS. Little touches like this help make a good product.

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stcredzero
There are a lot of things in a UI that are Verbs. But there are also lots of
things that are Tools. Tools seem to be devices that are used for certain
verbs, or a single verbs. If there are plural verbs, these should go together
in a way that makes sense. (Example: a file selection dialog that lets you
navigate folders and create new folders.)

Are Tools valid? Are they over used? Are they used enough?

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randomwalker
Even Gnome has been doing this for several years now. I think Microsoft has
good UI people, but none of them work on Windows. Strange, and sad.

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mshafrir
OK and Cancel are verbs.

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jmtame
Ha I like how it's correctly done in the Mac popup, but not in the PC.

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tokipin
this is the case in XP, but is one of the things i noticed was changed in
Vista

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litewulf
In fact... the vista implementation is far superior.

Get Vista, it sucks less than XP unless your hardware isn't supported.

