Making mistakes harder isn’t always better UX
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A confirmation dialog seems like an easy way to prevent mistakes.
But think about deleting something in a product you use every day.
You click delete, get a warning, confirm, and move on. After seeing that dialog enough times, you probably stop reading it.
I’ve been looking at this more as a recovery problem than a prevention problem.
For actions that can be safely reversed, I’d rather let users act and give them a clear way to undo it. For actions that can’t be reversed, slowing them down makes sense.
The tricky part is deciding which actions are actually reversible. Deleting a draft is one thing. Removing someone’s access to a shared workspace is another.
A confirmation dialog is easy to add. A reliable recovery path takes more thought.
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Agree, and I would add one more test besides reversible or not: will the user notice the mistake? A deleted draft is noticed right away, so undo is enough. Turning off notifications is technically reversible, but nobody notices the reminder that never came, so that is the one switch in my app that asks before it acts. Same logic for the shared workspace case, the person who loses access is not the one looking at the screen. So I would slow down the actions whose damage is invisible to whoever clicks, and make everything else instant with an undo.