Confirmation dialogs

Confirmation dialogs are used to prevent users from taking irreversible or dangerous actions. They add a bit of friction in exchange for safety, by increasing the number of steps needed to complete an action.

Because it’s an extra step, the first question to ask is: Can we avoid it? For example, could we offer an undo option instead? If yes, a confirmation dialog might be unnecessary. If not, we can still follow a few patterns to improve the user experience.

Communicate at a glance

In most cases, people don’t really read confirmation dialogs. They’re focused on completing their task, and the dialog feels like an obstacle. That means:

• We want to minimize interaction time with the dialog
• We have a split second of attention to communicate what we need

As a result, the dialog message should be as short and clear as possible. The sections below go into more detail.

Order of importance

When users see a dialog, they typically interact with its parts in this order:

1. Actions — Buttons are impossible to ignore since users must choose one
2. Title — Often read, but can be skipped if actions are obvious
3. Description — Often ignored

Design accordingly.

Guidelines

General principle

A “novice gaze” is an idea that a screen should not require prior knowledge to understand. Picture this: a user starts an action, gets distracted by a notification, then comes back 30 minutes later to a dialog asking: “Do you want to do this?” Now they have to retrace their steps to remember what “this” is. This is an example of breaking the “novice gaze”.

To maintain it:

• Avoid pronouns — name specific objects
• Use user-defined names when possible (e.g. service ‘Analytics’)

Actions

• Use clear, specific verbs
• Match the verb used in the title
• Avoid generic verbs like “OK” or “Confirm”

Title

• Phrase it as a question
• Use the same verb as the confirm action
• Include both the action and the target (e.g. Delete service ‘Analytics’?)
  • Place service names, organization names between single quotation marks
• Don’t overload it — be informative but concise

Description

Since it’s often skipped, omit the description if it’s not adding extra value. If extra context is needed to make a decision, use the description to explain the consequences, but keep it brief and scannable. One to two short sentences should suffice.

Examples