Wednesday, February 8, 2017

forms - How to avoid accidental email sending?


I've had this problem a number of times: when writing an email, I accidentally click on the "send" button, thus sending an incomplete email. (E.g. in Outlook, the "send" button is alarmingly close to the "pop out" button.)


I've found a workaround for this: I just leave the "to:" field empty until I am sure that I want to send it. But this is not a nice solution.



Why don't email companies provide a fix for this? For example, why don't they leave the filling of the "to:" field until after the user has typed the email?



Answer



Where-ever possible, users should have the option to undo any action. It's inevitable that people make mistakes, however regular dialog confirmations can become ignored and confirmed out of habit - thus becoming part of the mistake.


In the case of emails: if the email was not sent immediately, the user would be able to execute an undo command (rather than having to attempt a recall command).


Real-life example: this is actually a setting in gmail:


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