Forensic Review of Undo Safety Click
A reversibility check performed after a completed action has acquired the character of a required verification step.
Evidence
At 2:31 PM on April 17, the subject moved a file from one folder to another. The action completed in 0.3 seconds. A visual confirmation appeared briefly in the upper corner of the screen and disappeared before the subject finished reading it.
The subject then pressed Command-Z.
The file moved back. The subject moved it again. The file moved. The subject did not press Command-Z again.
This sequence was recorded. It has been recorded on fourteen similar occasions across the preceding ninety days.
Findings
The interface has already recorded the action. There is no ambiguity about whether the file moved. The file moved. The subject observed the file move. The confirmation appeared. The action was complete.
The undo safety click is not a test of whether the action happened. It is a test of whether the action is reversible. These are different tests, and the subject is performing the second test after the first question has been answered.
Undo safety click first added one extra decision to a moment that previously required none: the decision of whether to undo. That decision is now made every time. The answer is always no. The decision still occurs.
Pattern Analysis
Other people have begun anticipating this decision. A colleague who works in the same shared document environment has reported waiting briefly after making a change, on the assumption that the subject may undo it. The subject has not undone any collaborative changes.
The waiting period exists regardless.
Eventually the ordinary task feels improperly performed unless undo safety click happens first. The task was dragging a file and releasing it. It now includes a verification step. The verification step does not verify the thing that is uncertain, because nothing is uncertain. It verifies the reversibility of something that will not be reversed.
Conclusions
Undo safety click became valid procedure after two repetitions without objection. It has now occurred fourteen times. Nobody has objected. Its absence on the fifteenth occasion would require explanation.
The interface feedback was brief. The subject needed it to be slower. Undo safety click is the workaround for an interface that completes too quickly to feel finished.
This is a reasonable problem. The workaround is reasonable. The workaround becoming mandatory is the part under review.
Prepared by: Office of Interaction Forensics Classification: Behavioral , not a defect, not dismissed