Another defense strategy for fighting KBCs

Wiktor Zychla [wzychla_at_ii.uni.wroc.pl]

Introduction

This article is mainly inspired by the Defense against the dreaded Klingon Battlecruiser article. In short, the Klingon Battlecruiser (KBC) is a message box that is likely to be disposed by the user without reading the actual message. This often causes the disaster.

A typical KBC would look like this:

The problem is rather common and affect most developers:

How to make the user aware of operations he/she performs?

Solution

My first idea was inspired by the article mentioned at the top of the page. But rather than forcing the user to type a nonsignificant word, I would rather force him to type something that he/she would have to be really aware of:

Then I've realized than negative motivation is probably not the best for several psychological reasons. It would be wiser to force the user to read and understand the message.

This one is then my final choice:

It could easily be converted to a generic dialog box and the order of context questions should be changed each time the dialog is shown. The probability that a random choice of answers will allow the user to continue is 2-3 and can easily be decreased with additional questions.