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.