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Gmail let me down when it comes to discard an email

  • Writing by Rajveer
  • On December 13th, 2009 at 9:45 pm

It rarely happens that I have to compose a really long email. Every email has it’s own intend, and a long email certainly has a purpose to give up the time to do so. If anyone would have asked me a few hours ago about my trust level to compose an email like that on Gmail – I would have surely answered YES! But now I don’t. I bet even you can not, unless you are confident about never clicking 10 pixels away than you want to. As you can see death (Discard button) of an email you compose on Gmail is so close to “Save Now” button.

Gmail discard button placement

I do not know how many people get it right all the time, but Gmail has left very narrow margin for error in this case. Seeing this I myself being a web professional get the itching sensation in my hands that I wish I could move the Discard button to the right. Don’t we see a exit button button/icon always somewhere far away from the common working area in an application? I consider Discarding an email equal as exiting from the current action. Therefor I would like to see the Discard button placed in the right hand side – which might also help Gmail to have less number of people to crib about discarding an email mistakenly.

Gmail discard button placement

Even if the Discard button has to be placed there itself. Can Gmail not show a modal window showing a caution message “Dear user you are about to lose the copy text which you might have wrote so far. Please verify if you really want to discard it?”.

Correction: Gmail do provide a message at the top: “Your message has been discarded.” providing a link to Undo Discard. But the point is, I did not realize that when needed. Most likely because I had already believed that I have lost the draft when it jumped back to my Inbox. So I am still in support to see the discard button moved somewhere else.

7 Responses

  1. MauricioC December 13th, 2009 at 11:35 pm

    It does show a *much* more useful and clean “Undo discard” option.

  2. Matt Haley December 14th, 2009 at 12:30 am

    I just tried this out, and if you hit discard, you do get a message at the top of the window to allow you to undo the discard.

  3. Perryn Fowler December 14th, 2009 at 6:03 am

    While your suggestion to move the discard button to somewhere it is less likely to be hit by accident has merit, I strongly disagree with your desire for a confirmation dialog – *particularly* a modal one. It is a clear case of optimising for the worst case, and it is really irritating to be constantly asked if I really meant to do something.

    A much better approach from a usability perspective is to discard the message when requested and then provide a way to undo if you need to – and that is exactly what gmail does.

  4. Rajveer December 14th, 2009 at 10:12 am

    @MauricioC, Matt Haley, and Perryn Fowler: Thanks for the heads up, I have updated the post based on your comments :-)

  5. kumar February 11th, 2010 at 8:57 pm

    the best way is allow space for both type of users – first timers, frequent visitors, by allowing them configure whether they need alerts or not.

    Simple. You get alerts if you want and you dont if you dont want. Thats usability in my regards. Remember world is always divided into “i am right” kind of people who happens to differ with each other.

  6. Saager Mhatre July 17th, 2010 at 8:14 pm

    The ‘undo’ metaphor described above is applied by Google uniformly across GMail- archive, label, trash, move- all actions are followed by the status message followed by the undo link. It’s just an uncommon affordance that Google seems to have really liked.

    As for moving the Discard button to the right, I’d posit that inconspicuously placed buttons are worse than crowded buttons. If you’re looking for an alternative, I’d suggest we have the Discard button removed from the top bar, leaving it in the bottom bar only. That keeps all the actions together, while keeping the dangerous ones in the less trafficked one (but I’m just postulating, Google probably has better metrics on interaction patterns on GMail)

    Nevertheless, all of that posturing is moot once you get accustomed to the undo link.

  7. Vidyasri November 1st, 2010 at 9:16 pm

    I agree fully with this comment. Both to move the Discard button further away, & to have a notice asking you to confirm that you want to discard.

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