4 ms·

You know how in movies you need at least two people to bring their special secret keys, plug them in, and turn them at once to enable a self-destruct sequence?

You know how in movies you need at least two people to bring their special secret keys, plug them in, and turn them at once to enable a self-destruct sequence? That is a real principle in interface design - if something would be really, really bad to activate unintentionally, make it really, really hard to activate. If you design a nuclear missile facility, you don't put the "launch nukes" button right next to "check email" and "open facebook". Same way it shouldn't be easy for users to delete or corrupt their data by accident due to some omnipotent action innocently shoved right in between other trivial actions. I wouldn't blame the person who triggered this re-imaging process. I'd blame those who designed the re-imaging interface, to allow it to happen so easily by accident.

kalleboo 12y ago
In my experience, the key is that the UI makes it clear exactly what you're doing. What I mean is, instead of a button that says "Start Imaging", it should be "Start Imaging of the 12,600 computers this rule applies to". Of course, that's a lot more work for the programmer, so it's never done.
- lstamour 12y ago
  But then that leads to people automatically clicking "Yes" to the "Are you sure..." dialog. Though even I would pause at "Are you sure you want to reformat 12,500 machines including this one?" ;-)
  - rectangletangle 12y ago
    Having people type in some sort of auto-generated confirmation key might give them pause, seeing as the technique is seldom used.
    - kalleboo 12y ago
      Or in my original example, have them enter in the # of computers it's going to apply to.
- mantrax5 12y ago
  Event that is hardly enough. There should be a physical (well virtual physical) obstacle towards launching a high stakes command. The system should be able to assess the scope of a task, and ask you to confirm 10 times if it has to, in blinking red dialogs, to make sure you really want to do what you are doing. Of course, it's crucial that "clicking 10 times" is not the default behavior for any trivial action. Or boredom and the subsequently formed mechanical 10-click habit of the operator will kill the effectiveness of this approach...
- 7952 12y ago
  It also helps to have sensible conventions for naming hosts and groups. If you need to select a subset of machines then you are sometimes going to make a mistake as simple is getting a wildcard pattern wrong. Instead have groups with explicit and obvious names that require no memory to understand.

kalleboo 12y ago

In my experience, the key is that the UI makes it clear exactly what you're doing. What I mean is, instead of a button that says "Start Imaging", it should be "Start Imaging of the 12,600 computers this rule applies to". Of course, that's a lot more work for the programmer, so it's never done.

lstamour 12y ago
But then that leads to people automatically clicking "Yes" to the "Are you sure..." dialog. Though even I would pause at "Are you sure you want to reformat 12,500 machines including this one?" ;-)
- rectangletangle 12y ago
  Having people type in some sort of auto-generated confirmation key might give them pause, seeing as the technique is seldom used.
  - kalleboo 12y ago
    Or in my original example, have them enter in the # of computers it's going to apply to.
mantrax5 12y ago
Event that is hardly enough. There should be a physical (well virtual physical) obstacle towards launching a high stakes command. The system should be able to assess the scope of a task, and ask you to confirm 10 times if it has to, in blinking red dialogs, to make sure you really want to do what you are doing. Of course, it's crucial that "clicking 10 times" is not the default behavior for any trivial action. Or boredom and the subsequently formed mechanical 10-click habit of the operator will kill the effectiveness of this approach...
7952 12y ago
It also helps to have sensible conventions for naming hosts and groups. If you need to select a subset of machines then you are sometimes going to make a mistake as simple is getting a wildcard pattern wrong. Instead have groups with explicit and obvious names that require no memory to understand.