
Should "Yes, delete it" be red, or green? - tsudot
http://ux.stackexchange.com/questions/49991/should-yes-delete-it-be-red-or-green/
======
comex
Neither. Wherever possible, design your code to use undo rather than
confirmation, Gmail-style. Saves the user time and avoids training them to
click through confirmations (and perhaps eventually be sorry).

~~~
qq66
Making an action undoable often more than doubles the development cost of that
feature. Google can do it, for a small startup it only makes sense in a few
situations.

~~~
MarkMc
It is particularly difficult in a collaborative application with 'hard' links
between records. For example, consider this scenario:

(1) Sally deletes an employee record

(2) Bob deletes that employee's department

(3) Sally tries to undo the deletion of the employee - will the employee be
restored without a department?

~~~
hueving
>(1) Sally deletes an employee record >(2) Bob deletes that employee's
department

I would argue that a good design would actually prevent you from deleting
important records like these. i.e. when Bob clicks delete, it just marks the
object as deleted and it stops showing up in reports/interfaces. Then maybe
you have something clean it up 90 days later or something.

~~~
ajuc
Yes. This is pattern I've seen in both companies I worked for, and it makes so
much sense.

Similairly you don't make table ARTICLES with column AMOUNT and KIND. You make
table CHANGES with DIFFERENCE and KIND, and only ever add rows to that table
(possibly with negative DIFFERENCE).

~~~
pc86
Sorry I don’t really understand what you’re trying to say here. Could you
expand on the differences in data between the two tables, please?

~~~
Xlythe
In the first case, you only know the AMOUNT. You can't undo transactions
because you only have 1 object stored, the total amount. If you store
DIFFERENCE, then you'll have a table of every transaction and can undo them
individually. The cost is having to sum the table whenever you want to know
the amount (which is usually worth the flexibility).

~~~
ajuc
Regarding the performance - you can add triggers writing to additional table
with a sum, or maintain that table in the code that adds rows, or calculate it
each time you want to know the sum.

------
sturmeh
Red should be associated with risk (where care and consideration is
warranted), not 'bad' (you should not do this).

Thus the act of deleting should be red, but the act of not deleting should NOT
be green, rather a neutral tone.

~~~
acjohnson55
As stated in the accepted answer :)

But yes, that was my immediate reaction, too. Not the most mindblowing Stack
Exchange Q&A I've encountered on the HN front page.

------
zaidf
I'd also drop the "Yes" given we're auto-programmed to agree and make popups
disappear. "Delete it" is more powerful.

~~~
Demeno
As suggested, I'd change "Delete it" to just "Delete", might seem minor, but
it's less to read and the word "it" doesn't add any information the user
didn't already have...

~~~
zaidf
Agree!

------
joshuak
(1) Ask a simple question "Delete?"

(2) Don't use many words when 1 will do. "Cancel" "Delete"

(3) Don't use words when an icon will do.

(4) Don't use cognitively conflicting symbols and colors. Red be cautious,
green it's safe, but deleting something can be dangerous in either direction,
safe in either direction. A better mental model is action vs inaction, then
it's more clear to highlight the response that causes an action.

(5) Avoid blocking interfaces altogether. Avoid interrupting the users flow.
Perform all actions immediately, but only ever offer recoverable actions. Undo
is not the only choice, and probably not the best for things like entire
documents. Like loading a file, delete is often not meaningful in the undo
stack (though it can be). Another paradigm is moving an item to a
differentiated group, such as trash, an undisplayed group or a low rating.
This approach is idempotent and allow things to be recovered out of order
(it's also easer to implement than undo especially asynchronously). It can
also be it's own valuable feature like edit tracking for word processors.

------
bobbles
"Would you like to Cancel?"

"OK" / "Cancel"

~~~
MarkTee
That's confusing; they both appear to cancel whatever action was just
performed.

~~~
bobbles
Yes.. this is the point

------
mladenkovacevic
Colours are fine.. Either way works although for my sensibilities the red
works for the Delete button. I am red/green colourblind and the two have
distinct enough values that I can easily tell them apart.

But I think YES and NO shouldn't be there. It's an extra piece of information
that demands the original context of "Do you want to delete this album". It
might seem like a small mental investment to ask of your users but people have
varying degrees of comprehension at different times, whether due to temporary
distraction or because of more permanent conditions such as dyslexia and such.

Instead I would just say "You are about to delete this album" And have the
buttons read "Cancel" and "Delete"... Or something similar.

Undo would also be preferred as comex mentioned.. Or even better a git-like
revision history so you can undo any action in the past. This comes with other
technical challenges I'm sure but it's the most powerful solution.

------
skardan
It is sad nobody mentions book The Humane Interface by Jeff Raskin.

Raskin would say, that this is not a question of red or green. It is a
question of habit. If user deletes enough items, you will train him to press
"Yes" button and not to think about the question. It will be his habit.
Uninterruptible sequence.

Anybody deleted his important files just because he is "trained" to press
sequence F8 - Enter in his favourite file manager?

Raskin recommends to provide undo. User content is sacred and should not be
lost. You can also try to randomize the dialog. User will stop the sequence
and think what he is doing. But if user performs the delete operation often,
he will be greatly annoyed.

Read it. It is a great book with many valuable gems.
[http://amzn.com/0201379376](http://amzn.com/0201379376)

~~~
ASneakyFox
Please do not randomly change buttons. Thats the worst idea ever. Where does
this guy do his research?

------
tsudot
Another discussion which got started in the comments[1] is whether to place
the 'Delete' button to the left or right.[2]

[1] [http://ux.stackexchange.com/questions/49991/should-yes-
delet...](http://ux.stackexchange.com/questions/49991/should-yes-delete-it-be-
red-or-green/#comment74992_49994)

[2] [http://www.nngroup.com/articles/ok-cancel-or-cancel-
ok/](http://www.nngroup.com/articles/ok-cancel-or-cancel-ok/)

~~~
babuskov
Brings back the old Gnome vs KDE, Linux vs Windows thing with OK and Cancel
buttons ;)

See this discussion from 2002:

[http://markmail.org/message/hpkehtmximjn3cl5](http://markmail.org/message/hpkehtmximjn3cl5)

~~~
quesera
That's really the MacOS vs MSWindows disagreement, and then the "whom should
we emulate?" disagreement among Linux desktop people. Oh, and the OpenWindows
and CDE people before them.

I'm biased, but I think of this as another one of those "well, Microsoft got
it wrong, but people are so used to it now that we have to perpetuate it or we
look like we're just willfully antagonistic" situations.

User studies can be produced to prove either side, of course.

------
jamesaguilar
IMO, cancel should be neutral colored, and Delete should be "warning" colored
(be it red or orange).

Edit: I predicted the top response. Yay!

------
judk
Does it matter which shade of brown you choose?

/colorblind

------
zhte415
I would prefer solid blue for a confirming step, and a blue border with no
fill for a cancel button. The contrast of fill vs no fill for the button
highlights better than two colours.

------
analog31
Just a note that X percent of the population is colorblind. I'm not, but I
have a couple of colleagues who are, and I've made graphics that are
unreadable for them.

~~~
seanmcdirmid
Its a good idea to use "Delete" in addition to color, multiple signals can
avoid problems like color blindness.

------
jrockway
For most operations, "delete" should be reversible, so there are no
consequences for clicking delete. If you really get the UI right, you
shouldn't need confirmation. (Gmail's message like "this post has been
archived <unarchive>" after you archive a message seems about right to me. It
implies something like "you did something destructive, and we can cancel it
right now. or you can undo it manually later." Much better than confirm/cancel
dialogs.)

For things like "yes, I'm afraid of the NSA, wipe those tapes forever", that's
another issue. In that case, you want a "flow" rather than a button, I think.

------
freefrancisco
It should blink and beep, and have a 60s Batman yellow callout around it.

------
joerich
I think "Yes" should be "green". The question is clear... green reminds me of
the traffic ligths, green means "go on" or "go ahead". Maybe "yes" and
"delete" shouldn't be in the same button because it seems that "yes" has a
positive meaning (green) and "delete" a negative/alert meaning (red), that is
why (maybe)you got this paradox... Hope that was helpful.

------
coreymgilmore
Green denotes a good, positive action. Red denotes a warning, negative
message.

That being said, I would have a tendency to put [yes delete] as green. If this
was a "delete forever and destroy the world" button, then [yes delete] should
be red.

It is up to you based on how permanent this delete is. As has been noted,
Gmail style with undo is best.

------
superflit
One place that I worked the majority of users were from Asian descent. For
them the red was GOOD, Important, Money good sign.

For me red was always ''warning'', stop, danger...

So I don't think red is a good color or even if it has to have color..

~~~
acchow
I'm of Asian descent and cannot confirm. They still use red stop signs and
traffic lights. Red is also the color of blood - similarly, there's a fair
amount of literature supporting the evolutionary emergence of red as a signal
of danger.

~~~
dalke
Really? I thought it was one of those low-evidence beliefs. Consider
[http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3933460/](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3933460/)
:

> Recent research has shown that the color red influences psychological
> functioning. Red is hypothesized to be linked to aggression and danger in
> evolution, and these links are enhanced by culture-specific uses of red.
> Thus, color meanings are thought to be grounded in biologically based
> proclivities and learned associations. However, to date, there has been no
> direct evidence for the influence of experience on the red effect. This
> study focused on whether experience could change the psychological effects
> of the color red. In the context of the Chinese stock market, contrary to
> the meaning generally associated with red as negative and green as positive,
> red represents a rise in stock price and green stands for a decrease. An
> experiment using a 2×2 between subjects factorial design demonstrated that
> red (compared with green) impaired Chinese college students’ performance on
> an IQ test (in accordance with the red effect), but the opposite effect was
> found among stockbrokers. These results provide direct evidence of learned
> color meanings, in support of the general model of color effect. ...

which suggests that red has a non-trivial learned color meaning on people, and
leaving open the possibility that it's mostly, if not all, culturally based.

Or consider
[http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20677892](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20677892)
:

> in a series of 7 experiments we demonstrate that women perceive men to be
> more attractive and sexually desirable when seen on a red background and in
> red clothing, and we additionally show that status perceptions are
> responsible for this red effect.

They hypothesize that red is not a general signal of danger, but has many
meanings. NOTE!
[http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23398185](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23398185)
points out that there's likely publication bias in this experiment, so there
might be no signal. I bring up the study anyway to point out that many people
have different interpretations for the "evolutionary emergence", and the
evidence is low.

Or consider
[http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23148465](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23148465)
:

> Claims of universality pervade color preference research. It has been argued
> that there are universal preferences for some colors over others (e.g.,
> Eysenck, 1941), universal sex differences (e.g., Hurlbert & Ling, 2007), and
> universal mechanisms or dimensions that govern these preferences (e.g.,
> Palmer & Schloss, 2010). However, there have been surprisingly few cross-
> cultural investigations of color preference and none from nonindustrialized
> societies that are relatively free from the common influence of global
> consumer culture. Here, we compare the color preferences of British adults
> to those of Himba adults who belong to a nonindustrialized culture in rural
> Namibia. British and Himba color preferences are found to share few
> characteristics, and Himba color preferences display none of the so-called
> "universal" patterns or sex differences.

Since you say that there is a "fair amount of literature" on this topic, can
you point it out? I've not been able to find anything rigorous which supports
your statement. Certainly nothing which is stronger than that last citation.

~~~
nl
Whilst it is true that colors are seen differently in various cultures, the
universality of red as the color of stop signs makes it a sensible choice for
a color that is intended to make someone consider the consequences of an
action.

Not the OP, but there is a fair bit of literature which could be construed to
support their point. Indeed, 2 out of the 3 references you cite could support
their point.

1) Note that the general Chinese student performed worse when red was used -
despite the generally positive Chinese cultural values put on red. The fact
that training could overcome this does not invalidate that point. Indeed, the
learnt value of red indicates that it may be sensible to use it in UI, simply
because it is fairly standard.

2) Studies have shown that many women find dangerous men more attractive[1].
Perhaps this supports the idea that red represents danger?

3) Without access to the full study there is no way of determining exactly
what this says.

Also, I like this study showing that people wearing red in Olympic combat
sports have an advantage:
[http://community.dur.ac.uk/r.a.hill/red_advantage.htm](http://community.dur.ac.uk/r.a.hill/red_advantage.htm)

[1] eg [http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/head-games/201310/why-
do...](http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/head-games/201310/why-do-women-
fall-bad-boys)

~~~
bch
> the universality of red as the color of stop sign

[http://i.imgur.com/6UTTUjW.jpg](http://i.imgur.com/6UTTUjW.jpg)

[http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stop_sign](http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stop_sign)

~~~
thaumasiotes
The wikipedia link is strong support for the idea that stop signs are
universally red. Every pictured sign, from Argentina to Zimbabwe, is at the
very least framed in red, and most are considerably redder than that. The text
notes "The white legend/red field appearance is usually the same [from country
to country]".

The imgur link shows an unexplained green sign. Any thoughts as to why it's
green?

~~~
bch
Not clear why that instance is green. I think I've seen arrive photos of green
stop signs too. The point of my post wasn't too be flippant though: the GP was
talking about stop signs being universally red, and that being basis for red
labels/buttons. It only takes one example to disprove universality, I showed
multiple.

To point of labeling and actions though:

1) I'm proponent of button labels being verbs ("Delete" vs "Yes") 2) Undo-able
where possible

~~~
thaumasiotes
Actually, the post you responded to specifically argued that the universality
(= every country, not necessarily every sign) of red stop signs makes red a
good color for warning dialogs. _That_ argument doesn't require that all stop
signs be red everywhere, it requires that red stop signs be typical
everywhere, which they are. The only non-red stop signs described by wikipedia
are several decades old.

As to the topic, I agree that the "yes" doesn't belong on the buttons, and
have no particular opinion on undo vs no-undo.

------
timinman
Since Red means both 'Cancel' and 'Delete', use something else: Black. Black,
like: 'an empty black hole is where your data will go.'

------
halcyondaze
Why not have a Yes and No, instead of Yes, delete it and No, keep it? Seems
like it solves the problem.

~~~
batiudrami
Ideally the button should describe what is going to happen so people who skim
read the dialogue still know what it means - see
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5018918](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5018918)

~~~
kzrdude
I don't understand why Yes/No buttons are still being used everywhere. It's
stone age.

------
htk
The accepted answer is pretty close to what iOS uses on its UIActionSheet
control.

They use the concept of "destructive actions", and delete would fit the bill.

Destructive actions will show in red, and the rest shows in the default button
color.

------
JungleGymSam
Why is the question so long? That's causing part of the confusion. A simple
"Delete album? Yes/No" is more than enough.

------
nighthawk24
red

------
stronglikedan
Although I prefer the method in the best chosen answer, if I had to choose
between red and green, I would choose green. You are confirming an action when
choosing yes. The button to cancel the operation should be red.

~~~
jonahx
You are also being warned about something, and warnings are red. The "warning"
aspect should trump the "confirmation" aspect, and imo it's not even a close
decision.

------
aaron695
Another SO set up question :)

But what I did find interesting was this comment getting so many votes -

117 "Neither, if you're red-green color blind like 10% of men. – Roddy of the
Frozen Peas Jan 12 at 5:31"

With a obvious reply, but less votes -

53 "@RoddyoftheFrozenPeas (1) while some degrees of color blindness are quite
common, thinking that 10% of men are red/green color blind is totally insane,
(2) solely using a color to point out something is bad for color blinds, but
if the color is something "extra" on top of the main information, then it's
perfectly fine. I'm quite surprised and worried that your horribly wrong
comment managed to raise 4 votes... – Lohoris Jan 12"

It's amazing people really can't think for themselves and just meaninglessly
up-vote because it seems the right thing to do, as compared to what the
logical thing to do is.

~~~
acjohnson55
Nearly 10% of men are colorblind, though not all red/green. It is by far the
most common type though, and I'm red/green colorblind. A common misconception
is that reds and greens are indistinguishable to people like me. That's not
really the case.

Most reds look red and most greens look green. It's just that some particular
shades of each are ambiguous. For me, the reds and greens produced by displays
tend to be tougher to distinguish than natural hues, but the shades in the
Stack Exchange question are as different as can be. It's tough to explain.
It's also so subtle that many people with my particular type of colorblindness
live and die without ever knowing the difference.

I only learned I was colorblind after being explicitly tested for it in 6th
grade. I was pretty surprised! Though it did explain how I always seemed to
mess up school assignments that involved coloring maps.

