UI design - Include a Cancel button or not?

Question

We are designing the UI for a new line of business application. We have no real constraints and are free to design the UI as we see fit. The UI will be done in WPF and targeted for Windows 7, Vista, and XP Pro users.

Many dialog boxes contain OK and Cancel buttons in their lower right corner. Do you feel it is necessary to have this Cancel button or is the red X in the upper right corner sufficient? We are discussing this as we have been noticing more UIs that do not have cancel buttons, only the red X.

Answer 1

Include it. This is very common in other user interfaces. Give the user the choice of which to use; making it for them might make them annoyed with your interface.

Answer 2

Users are used to having standard GUI layouts - otherwise they get confused. They also have different ways of using the standard interface. Some people only use the X, some people only use Cancel. People usually ignore the one they're not using, but get confused if their one isn't present. So be safe and keep them both in - it should only be a one-liner function for Cancek anyway.

Answer 3

Include the Cancel button. The red X is VERY hard to tab to. ;)

Answer 4

+1 on including it. If you don't include it now and then need some different functionality on Cancel to Close later on, your users will already be used to automatically closing.

Answer 5

Present the two designs to the customer - one with the "Cancel" button, the other without. See what their thoughts are.

Better still present them as partially working prototypes and watch them as they use the dialogs. If you ask them to perform a set of tasks and see if they have trouble when asked to cancel an operation.

Having said that, my preference is to include a "Cancel" button for the reasons others have mentioned:

• Accessibility (especially as Esc should be mapped to it).
• Convention (users will be expecting it).

Answer 6

Just like we have 'ESC' button on keyboard, we need 'Cancel' in dialogs.

A matter of usability :-)

Answer 7

Not only you should add it but also make sure ESC is mapped to it.

Answer 8

Include it. And please also make sure that you make sure that hitting the Escape key does the same thing as the Cancel button.

Also, just because you're designing from scratch, please don't throw out all convention. Take a look at MSFT's UX Guidelines for dialog boxes.

Answer 9

The red button is really for 'Close' rather than 'Cancel'. 'Cancel' canceling a running task. Use a 'Close' button instead. And yes include the 'Close' if there is a reason for people to click on it. The red button is quite difficult to click when you really want to close something quickly.

Answer 10

Include it!

Answer 11

If you have that kind of freedom, consider eliminating dialog boxes from your application entirely, especially ones with the typical "OK | CANCEL" paradigm. Dialog boxes disrupt the flow of action and generally should only be used for things which absolutely require the program to interrupt the user.

You'll notice how disruptive they are in the web environment -- e.g., Stack Overflow only uses them when it needs to be able to OVERRIDE your action, e.g., when you navigate away from an unsubmitted answer.

Answer 12

From a user interface perspective, not including a cancel button might leave some users feeling like they have no choice, which is certainly not the case. Imagine the following simple decision scenario:

Warning: All of the files in the selected folder will be deleted. This action cannot be undone. Are you sure you would like to continue?

How silly would an interface be if the only option was Ok? Also, as noted above, on many platforms the Escape key is mapped to Cancel. It's also probably worthwhile setting a default button so that pressing the Enter/Space key doesn't inadvertently perform the action that cannot be undone.