Designing Confirmation

The confirmation design pattern isn’t something to be taken lightly. If employed erroneously, or not at all, users may commit unintended havoc. This article shares guidelines and best practices for designing effective confirmations.

Confirmations ask a user to verify whether they want to proceed or cancel a requested action. Confirmations are often used for destructive actions, like deleting a photo album—or consequential actions, like publishing this article.

Confirmations aren’t always needed, and can actually increase mistakes. If a user is bombarded with confirmation for every action, they will disregard it. Confirmations shouldn’t be used for actions that are easily reversed or inconsequential.

Good practice:

1. Present the action as a question in the header

2. Explain the outcome of the action in the body

3. Restate the action in the confirmation button

Avoid:

1. Ambiguous questions like “Are you sure?”

2. Non-descriptive body copy

3. Yes/No actions

4. “Cancel” can cause confusion. When committing a destructive action, like discarding changes, users may mistake “cancel” for the intended action instead of canceling the confirmation dialog.

Confirmations can include multiple interactions to make the outcome explicit to the user. Examples include checking boxes that indicate the intention or entering a password.

You can present confirmations in a number of ways including inline, modal, and tool-tip.

Confirmation dialog presented in a modal, tool-tip, and inline design component.

The future of confirmed action

In 2014, I wrote an article on building a better button. It was in response to the “Flat Design” trend. Buttons were looking less like buttons, and I worried users would unintentionally invoke harmful actions. The idea was to create a button that required a more intensive interaction than a click or tap (shown above). A couple of years after I wrote the article, I noticed Amazon was using something similar in their shopping experience and Uber used the general approach for delivery confirmation. I'm happy to see the concept was adopted by these innovative companies.

Over a decade later since I wrote the article, artificial intelligence, virtual reality, augmented reality, wearables, and gesture/voice-based interfaces of all kinds became mainstream. We are moving to a future where the dexterity and context of an interaction is vastly different and easier. Does this change the way we think about invoking action?

How do you think confirmations will change? What new best practices will emerge?