Alert Dialog Box - Criticism

Criticism

Modal alert dialogs are generally frowned upon by experts in usability and human-computer interaction, since they are prone to produce mode errors due to their unrequested nature. A study to appear at the Proceedings of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society showed that when a user dialog appears, the primary goal of users is typically to get rid of them as soon as possible even without any analysis of the causes for the dialog appearance. When asked, users dismissed any dialog box as a distraction from their assigned task.

This is explained by a common complaint about the wording of the message in the alert box, which is often incomprehensible to the user. In applications without proper user-centered design, the developers decide the text of the message, including terms and concepts from the mental model of the programmer, not of the user's view of the world. Since the dialog doesn't work to accomplish the user needs, the common reaction will be to dismiss the alert without further consideration.

Dangerous actions should be undoable wherever possible; a modal dialog that appears unexpectedly or which is dismissed by habituation will not protect from the dangerous action. This problem can be avoided by providing an undo action instead of a warning, or showing the warning in an infobar instead of a dialog.

Another recognized problem is that, as a modal window, the dialog blocks all workflow in the program until it is closed. Users may not recognize that the dialog requires their attention, leading to confusion about the main window being non-responsive, or causing loss of the user's data input. This often happens in data entry forms after an error alert produced by invalid data. The preferred design include changing a visual aspect of the input element to reflect an invalid entry (such as applying a red border), or adding a character such as an asterisk next to the input element that needs to be corrected.