Dear Apple, this is bad. You need to fix it

6 points

3 years ago

Over 600 results for the infamous "Delete and Report Junk" button being hit by mistake and causing all kinds of consternation. One of the posters hit it by accident on a message from her manager at work. Dozens of similar stories. Here's another example:

"I was selecting multiple messages with multiple people to delete, but instead i accidentally reported as junk. these are close friends and family, will they still be able to contact me? if i message them can they still message back?"

https://discussions.apple.com/search?source=aml&origin=asc_serp&q=Delete%2Band%2BReport%2BJunk

A google search reveals thousands of pages talking about this problem.

And, of course, we all know that there are likely millions of people suffering with this bad UI/UX decision each and every day, people who don't take to the web to seek help.

This is, without a doubt, one of the worst UI/UX decisions I have seen on iOS almost since inception. People truly get stressed when they accidentally press that option instead of "Delete" and there is no way to claw it back. What's worse is that it is physically located where the "Delete" button was before the update that introduced it. Muscle memory being what it is, people go for that location automatically, except that now they reported their mother, sister, boss or husband to the spam lords.

What would be a better UI/UX approach?

First, restore the "Delete" option to the position it has historically held:

    Delete
    Cancel

Then, add the "Delete and Report Junk" as a SLIDER above the standard "Delete" and with a suitable gap, perhaps with a message:

    Delete and Report Junk
    Slide to delete message
    and report junk to your
      carrier and Apple.
    
            Delete
            Cancel

That would make it nearly impossible for someone to accidentally report their mother as junk.

The other option would be to add a "Do you really want to..." dialog every time someone presses that button. I would put a slider on that one too. The nice thing about slider actions is that they are difficult to activate accidentally because they require an action that is very different from a tap.

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