User Interface Design
Peoplesoft, the enterprise app, has many interface problems. Above is one. This dialog box came up after I entered mid-term grades but forgot to click the save button. When I hit the “return” button to go back to the main class page, Peoplesoft helpfully reminded me that I hadn’t saved the grades. Like a of users, I figured I should click “Cancel” to, um, cancel my intended action so I could hit Save. Unfortunately, “Cancel” in this dialog means to actually complete the action (in this case, leaving the page and losing the changes I’d forgotten to save).
Arguably, “Cancel” could mean cancel the changes I’d just made. But I’ve not seen that convention used as far as I can recall. Of course, I could just read every dialog box fully, but users reading all the text in a dialog box is only slightly more common that users reading End-User License Agreements.
