Designed for Use, 2nd Edition

Front Load Decisions

In some cases you have to ask the user to make a decision. For those instances, it’s a good idea to front load decisions as much as possible so the user can make them all at once and then be left alone. For example, it’s best to allow users to enter software-licensing information at the beginning of the installation process and not stop the installation in the middle to ask them for their licensing data.

Here’s another example of an unnecessary interruption, this time from OpenOffice.org:

Instead of interrupting the user during a search, simply add an option to the search dialog, the way BBEdit^[94] does.

Or, best of all, don’t ...