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One thing that seems to really get the point across is to have someone type the words “permanently delete” in a text box before enabling the button. I’ve seen

One thing that seems to really get the point across is to have someone type the words “permanently delete” in a text box before enabling the button. I’ve seen this UI pattern in a few places, and it is a bit annoying for something you might do semi-regularly, but seems totally appropriate for your use-case. Something about typing that makes people’s brains fully activate, I think.

albert_e 3y ago
AWS does this for a few irreversible deletes
- hiatus 3y ago
  AWS is so strangely inconsistent about this. In some places it is "delete", others "permanently delete", and others still it is the name of the resource. Thinking about it more, keeping the user on their toes like that makes it less likely to fat-finger a deletion, I suppose.
hotpotamus 3y ago
Came here to mention that UI option. At an old job, some of the internal tools made you add a flag "--I-am-not-a-moran[sic]-I-know-what-I-do" or "--sudo-make-me-a-sandwich" to important operations, presumably to remind you of their impact and give you a moment of typing to think about it.
chrisnight 3y ago
> Something about typing that makes people’s brains fully activate, I think. Part of it might be that, but I think it’s also about the previous experiences that people have with programs. How much a person thinks about something is inversely proportional to how much they see it. Typing is just something not many companies have added, so seeing it is off-putting and makes people think. If you had to type “Permanently Delete This” all day to delete random entries in a database, you wouldn’t think twice before you accidentally deleted all of production. This is why having the same warning for two different severities is a big problem. People encounter the first and realize it isn’t a big deal, and then glaze through the second because of their previous experience. Deleting an empty folder is fine, but deleting your home directory might not be, even if both are just “deleting a folder”.

albert_e 3y ago

AWS does this for a few irreversible deletes

hiatus 3y ago
AWS is so strangely inconsistent about this. In some places it is "delete", others "permanently delete", and others still it is the name of the resource. Thinking about it more, keeping the user on their toes like that makes it less likely to fat-finger a deletion, I suppose.

hotpotamus 3y ago

Came here to mention that UI option. At an old job, some of the internal tools made you add a flag "--I-am-not-a-moran[sic]-I-know-what-I-do" or "--sudo-make-me-a-sandwich" to important operations, presumably to remind you of their impact and give you a moment of typing to think about it.

chrisnight 3y ago

> Something about typing that makes people’s brains fully activate, I think. Part of it might be that, but I think it’s also about the previous experiences that people have with programs. How much a person thinks about something is inversely proportional to how much they see it. Typing is just something not many companies have added, so seeing it is off-putting and makes people think. If you had to type “Permanently Delete This” all day to delete random entries in a database, you wouldn’t think twice before you accidentally deleted all of production. This is why having the same warning for two different severities is a big problem. People encounter the first and realize it isn’t a big deal, and then glaze through the second because of their previous experience. Deleting an empty folder is fine, but deleting your home directory might not be, even if both are just “deleting a folder”.