UX Observations: Dialogue Boxes

You know those customizable M&M’s you can make, like with your photo and a cute phrase on them? I was making some the other day (for a friend’s wedding, c'mon) when I came across this:

                        

Well, I’m curious. Why? So, I click on the “Why?” link and a little dialogue box pops up that says “Because the colors are too dark and your image won’t look good,” or something like that. 

Dialogue boxes  interrupt the flow of your experience, which is why they should be saved them for things like “Wait! Are you sure you DON’T want to save your dissertation?” When you sprinkle dialogue boxes all willy nilly, people start ignoring them and spastically clicking whatever button will close them most quickly. 

You’ve done that before. You just want to close the thing, and you wind up confirming that you’d like to be on the NRA’s mailing list. 

This particular issue could have been remedied with some cute copy. First of all, “Non-printable colors” implies that those are the colors that can’t be PRINTED. To say what they meant, “Colors That Can’t Have Images or Text” might be clearer.

As a matter of fact, I would have written “These are colors on which we cannot print. They’re too dark to show a clear image! (sorry!)" 

Cutesy, explanatory, and gets rid of the need for a dialogue box. Everyone wins.