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Presenting choices in a dialog box

When attempting to copy files that already exist in the destination folder, Vista gives you these options:

Copy_dialog_blur

This dialog has a lot of explanatory text.  And to my eye the actions--what you are supposed to click--are not strongly distinguished from the other text (a problem of visual hierarchy).  I think  the presentation is a case of a bit too much information that serves complicate the choice.

Compare the above to this Mac OS X dialog for the same situation:

Capture_blur

Here, at a glance, I can see there are two choices: stop and replace. The button treatment of the actions makes them pop out from the other elements of the dialog. 

I suspect if we were to do A/B testing of these solutions, there would be significantly lower task times associated with the Mac OS X presentation when compared to the Vista approach.

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  • Blink Interactive is a Seattle-based user experience consulting firm. Our design library is an informal collection of design examples with commentary.

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