Designed for Use

Temporary Undo

There are some situations where implementing undo is impossible for technical reasons. You can’t let the user undo sending an email; once it’s sent, it’s out of your control. Similarly, while you can delete a tweet once it’s sent and unpublish a blog post once it’s published, that’s not quite the same as preventing the action altogether.

One solution to this is to delay the action and allow the user to undo it temporarily. Instead of sending the mail right away, show an undo button for a few seconds. If the user undoes the action, don’t send the mail. Otherwise, remove the undo button and send the mail. Gmail implements this in its web interface:

Graphic and interaction designer Clayton Miller calls this “delayed passive confirmation,” ...