4 ms·

They should just add a checkbox that says "Dry run" to see if the money would be transferred to the right place... I'll take $100,000 for this consultancy reco

They should just add a checkbox that says "Dry run" to see if the money would be transferred to the right place... I'll take $100,000 for this consultancy recommendation, thanks Citibank. ;)

ed25519FUUU 6y ago
Or a confirmation box with actual numbers: “Do you really want to send $XX to account A and $XX to account B”? Even if you think you have an excellent, fool-proof UX, always make people confirm big things.
- JackFr 6y ago
  Matt Levine's article, which has some greater detail, pointed out that there was an "Some of this money is going to an external account. Are you sure this is correct?" confirmation pop-up. The problem was they intended to actually send the interest, so there was an assumption that that's what the dialog was referring to.
  - PeterisP 6y ago
    What I read in parent post is that if instead of a generic message it would tell what exactly it is doing ($xxx is going to AAA and $yyy is going to BBB) then that would have helped.
- mdpopescu 6y ago
  You forget the first law of UI: nobody reads messages. And the second law of UI: if the user wants to see porn^H^H^H^Hdancing bunnies, they will do everything they can until they get to the dancing bunnies.
- 1996 6y ago
  You are unfairly downvoted, while giving the proper answer. For complex actions, the UI should summarize the future result of the comment - not so little as to be useless (ex: "some of the money will go to an external account" = how much money? on which external account? only one? more?) and not much as to be a description of the underlying software process (as a debugging output would) This requires both domain knowledge and software literacy, so it is hardly found, if ever.
  - netsharc 6y ago
    Hmm, online stores can do this ("here's the product you're about to buy, the quantity and its price, shipping, total sum, here's the address it'll be shipped to, hit 'Purchase' to confirm."), but I guess no one at the bank wanted to pay for that feature on their ancient app.
foobarian 6y ago
Any time I see a "dry run" option in internal tools I tread very, very carefully :) Often they don't work due to lack of exercise, or worse are not dry at all. Edit: in case that was snark: ha, ha.
- kenjackson 6y ago
  At the very least though it’s a red flag that whatever you’re doing probably isn’t intuitive.
- Smaug123 6y ago
  Which is very sad, because I think first-class support for `--dry-run` is a great way to architect a tool! Anything I write for which it's meaningful is divided into a "work out and represent in memory what I'm going to do" stage and a "do it" stage. Then `--dry-run` is a simple matter of `print` instead of `execute`. This paid off really well for me recently, where the `execute` stage turned out not to be fit for purpose, but the statement of intent was all still correct. The rewrite didn't have to touch the "gather" stage at all. Huge rewrite becomes naturally much more limited in scope. Just another tool in the modular-design toolbox: you create a strongly-typed API boundary down the middle of the program. (hashtag defunctionalisation)

They should just add a checkbox that says "Dry run" to see if the money would be transferred to the right place... I'll take $100,000 for this consultancy recommendation, thanks Citibank. ;)

ed25519FUUU 6y ago

Or a confirmation box with actual numbers: “Do you really want to send $XX to account A and $XX to account B”? Even if you think you have an excellent, fool-proof UX, always make people confirm big things.

JackFr 6y ago
Matt Levine's article, which has some greater detail, pointed out that there was an "Some of this money is going to an external account. Are you sure this is correct?" confirmation pop-up. The problem was they intended to actually send the interest, so there was an assumption that that's what the dialog was referring to.
- PeterisP 6y ago
  What I read in parent post is that if instead of a generic message it would tell what exactly it is doing ($xxx is going to AAA and $yyy is going to BBB) then that would have helped.
mdpopescu 6y ago
You forget the first law of UI: nobody reads messages. And the second law of UI: if the user wants to see porn^H^H^H^Hdancing bunnies, they will do everything they can until they get to the dancing bunnies.
1996 6y ago
You are unfairly downvoted, while giving the proper answer. For complex actions, the UI should summarize the future result of the comment - not so little as to be useless (ex: "some of the money will go to an external account" = how much money? on which external account? only one? more?) and not much as to be a description of the underlying software process (as a debugging output would) This requires both domain knowledge and software literacy, so it is hardly found, if ever.
- netsharc 6y ago
  Hmm, online stores can do this ("here's the product you're about to buy, the quantity and its price, shipping, total sum, here's the address it'll be shipped to, hit 'Purchase' to confirm."), but I guess no one at the bank wanted to pay for that feature on their ancient app.

foobarian 6y ago

Any time I see a "dry run" option in internal tools I tread very, very carefully :) Often they don't work due to lack of exercise, or worse are not dry at all. Edit: in case that was snark: ha, ha.

kenjackson 6y ago
At the very least though it’s a red flag that whatever you’re doing probably isn’t intuitive.
Smaug123 6y ago
Which is very sad, because I think first-class support for `--dry-run` is a great way to architect a tool! Anything I write for which it's meaningful is divided into a "work out and represent in memory what I'm going to do" stage and a "do it" stage. Then `--dry-run` is a simple matter of `print` instead of `execute`. This paid off really well for me recently, where the `execute` stage turned out not to be fit for purpose, but the statement of intent was all still correct. The rewrite didn't have to touch the "gather" stage at all. Huge rewrite becomes naturally much more limited in scope. Just another tool in the modular-design toolbox: you create a strongly-typed API boundary down the middle of the program. (hashtag defunctionalisation)