When the close/cancel button is not taken into consideration | UX UI Design
When you are on a career-changing path, all you do is study, read, and pay attention to everything around you so you can understand what the professionals are saying. And that is exactly what I have been doing for the last 3 months.
As a photographer moving to UX design, I noticed that I needed to change the way I see things and that is why the first book I read was “The Design of Everyday Things” by Donald Norman. People around the world say it is a classic book about design and I must agree with them because it changed the way I observe my surroundings — not only with a frame in front of my eyes but now with the usability lens on it.
During my reading, one of the most important lessons that I have learned is that if the user is having problems with an app/website/product in general, it is usually the design’s fault. As Norman said: “[…] in my experience, human error usually is a result of poor design: it should be called system error. Humans err continually; it is an intrinsic part of our nature. System design should take this into account”.
This quote made me understand that maybe all those problems happen because it is too difficult for users to understand the journey inside the app, or even because not all the buttons are in the correct place.
“In design, it is important to show the effect of an action. Without feedback, one is always wondering whether anything has happened. Maybe the button wasn’t pushed hard enough; maybe the machine has stopped working; maybe it is doing the wrong thing. Without feedback, we turn equipment off at improper times or restart unnecessarily, losing all our recent work. Or we repeat the command and end up having the operation done twice, often to our detriment. Feedback is critical.”
But did you think about an app that does not even have a special button for you to press? What does that make you think while you are in that specific moment? Could we consider it a case of poor feedback also? So, with all these thoughts in my mind, here are three examples of the lack — or misplace — of a close/cancel button in different apps that I use regularly in my life and my opinion about them.
Rappi [on iPhone]:
Rappi is a Colombian ordering app that has excelled the average market. You can order food, groceries, pharmacy, and even specific requests such as taking cash in an ATM for you. In my opinion, they are not the easiest app to use but they work well. However, on the last update, they just forgot to add the cancel button on their confirmation screen. I tried to exit the page by clicking on the green check icon, on the confirmation title, on the text, but nothing happened. As the only way out, I had to close the whole application because of that small but important mistake.
Notion [on iPhone]:
Notion is a worldwide app that helps people organize their lives in specific manners. I do believe that you can create any page that you will ever need in your life there. But they also forgot to put a close/cancel button on the pages when you use the iPhone app. It is just impossible for you to validate the creation of a new page or to leave that screen unless you click on the navigation icon. So, if you make a mistake by creating a new page, you will spend a few minutes trying to figure it out — just as I did.
Netflix [on iPad]:
We do not need introductions for this app, do we? I truly believe it is the best streaming app with all the usability resources and search engines. But — yes, there is a but — when they changed the iPad interface it came with a weird replacement for some icons, in my opinion. In a different perspective from the previous apps, they did not forget about the close button but it came way too close to the volume button and it completely got lost on the screen.
The first time that I used the app after the update, I spent a few minutes searching for the close button because it was too subtle, or maybe the spacing did not feel right.
If you take a look, the connecting button is on the upper right corner of the home page, but it changes place when you enter the stream page standing on the upper left corner — that is where I believe the cancel button should be placed. Keeping consistency in all the screens could help the app with that problem.
Conclusion
It is incredibly hard to create a famous app having to think about all the buttons, the spacing, and the user journey. But, at the same time, it is completely fine to make a mistake — in these cases, of not taking the close/cancel buttons into close consideration.
So if you are starting in this UX UI design world, just like I am, do not be nervous or frustrated because to err is human — even in big and famous companies. And it is pretty cool to see and understand things that you have never noticed before. :)