Worked example - Making a small but significant usability improvement
How an explicit title in a modal helps users avoid mistakes
Photo by Jungwoo Hong on Unsplash
I was working on an existing enterprise application when I came across a modal that looked something like this:
Immediately I noticed a tiny tweak that can be made which will make this modal much safer to use. Did you spot it?
Simply adding the invoice number to the title of the modal means that if the user has edited the wrong invoice, they have a chance to notice. It's hardly a foolproof mechanism, but at essentially zero cost we can provide them with a chance of noticing their mistake.
This is an example of how applications can often be made more usable by tiny changes. It took mere seconds to add the invoice number to this modal, but the change has the potential to save someone significant difficulty and embarrassment. We write software to improve the lives of others, so this sort of change is a no-brainer.