Error Prevention in Design

I've been working on something that I call the Error Prevention exercise, a simple little checklist to use to reduce the number of possible errors on a web page. I found something that is a great example of this - the pop-up menu on a misspelled word inFirefox 2.0.

The top two items are seemingly very related and located close to each other, however, the result of clicking on them produces drastically different results:

The first item corrects the spelling of the misspelled word.

The second item adds the misspelled word to your dictionary.

One fixes an error. The other could fix the error permanently, or it could prevent you from ever fixing the error again.

The fact that these two choices are so close to each other increases the likelihood that I might select the wrong choice - with possibly very negative consequences (I know because I've now added two misspelled words to my dictionary - whoops!).

Of course I blamed myself the first time I did it, but the second time I realized that this was just poor design.

Now, before I get berated with tons of hate mail, keep in mind that I really LOVE Firefox. I never use IE anymore.

The question really comes down to this: what are the consequences of someone clicking the wrong choice? If the consequences are high, make sure that the error is hard to make.

Perhaps they could have added something in between the two choices, maybe "Ignore"?

What do you think?

Comments

[Mike]

Jon,

You know the old saying "You can't make anything foolproof; fools are so ingenious"! In this case, if the system had a confirmation dialog when you clicked 'Add to dictionary' I would be okay with the items being together. After all, the ARE probably the two most logical and popular choices.

So will you be sharing that checklist?

Mike

P.S. Somebody from AMP hit my web site after Googling your name. Keep your eyes open, buddy!

[Jon Strande]

Mike,

Yeah, great call! The confirmation box would be okay in this case... since there is no clear way to undo that action.

Yeah, I'll be sharing the checklist - if I ever get it done! ;-)

Jon

[Mike B.]

Sorry, I have to give a big thumbs-down to the confirmation dialog. How many other spell-checkers (or apps that contain them) require an extra click to add a word to the dictionary?

But I completely agree with Jon about the original problem. The options need to be arranged in such a way that it's just a little bit harder to click the wrong one by mistake. Another possibility might be to display a dialog initially, instead of a menu, the way many other apps do. This way, you can arrange, size, and label the options however you want, in 2 dimensions.

btw, I prefer the adage, "You can make it fool-proof, but you can't make it damn fool-proof!"

[Jon Strande]

Mike B, yeah, a confirmation dialog is not a great solution, they've got something pretty cool going by having the spell checker on the right click of the menu... so why can't they make that context sensitive menu better for this purpose? Why do they all look the same?

Great comment!

Thank you!

Jon