Comment by afandian
3 months ago
Hey UX people. "Not now" says "I won't take no for an answer". It comes across as _really_ creepy. Let me say "no".
And no, you don't know better than me about this cool feature.
3 months ago
Hey UX people. "Not now" says "I won't take no for an answer". It comes across as _really_ creepy. Let me say "no".
And no, you don't know better than me about this cool feature.
The only thing I'd add is that if you can opt to say "yes" later, it should be obvious where to find it (eg. make a logical settings menu) or they point you to where you can find it. If they really want to make you feel comfortable using their app/site/service there shouldn't be any loss aversion instinct stirred up by hitting "no" as though it's your only chance to accept what they're offering.
Agreed. But the same should be true of selecting 'yes'.
Playing devil's advocate here: Isn't one advantage of "not now" that it conveys "I don't want to worry about this now, don't change anything and get out of my way" whereas "no" burdens the user with a conscious choice?
I see your point, but I'd argue the opposite.
If I say no, that's an optional feature that I didn't ask for, and no longer need to think about it.
If I say 'not yet', it's one more thing I know I'm going to be reminded about, one piece of software that has no respect for me or consent.
Are you perhaps more concerned about software that keeps nagging you about the same thing over and over again than about the wording in particular? Because badly designed software will do that whether you told it "not yet" or "no".
While I can see the frustration by repeatedly using such software, it seems fair that a well-intentioned UX designer would use "not yet" if they found it works better for a majority of people. What then matters is that they respect the intent of everyone by not bringing the choice up again.
3 replies →
I don’t think any UX professional is confused about that. It’s simply a dark pattern.
Even semantically, "Not now" should function as "Dismiss forever" because you can always go to Settings and give the app that permission, not now but later.
"Not now" can be validly interpreted to mean "not in this context" or "not here". It's not necessarily temporal.
Just was adding "Not now" to a notification dialog in my app today simply because it feels softer. But it's a definite "no", the prompt won't appear again unless you enable notifications yourself later from the settings (hence the "now").
That behavior wouldn't be clear to me as a user unless it were spelled out like you just did. My expectation when I see "Not Now" is that there will be a "Sometime Later". I would recommend changing your language here.
Is there something wrong with "No thanks" ?
Nope, I ended up changing it to that one to avoid the association with nagging prompts.
You could A/B test it. Add a 'not now' and a 'no' button.
I could, but I don't use trackng in my apps aside from some platform/error stats
> "Not now" says "I won't take no for an answer".
They know. When a designer makes one of those prompts with only a "not now", they tend to mean a very specific thing, that is at the same time a subtle message to the user and a passive-aggressive stab at the company they work for.
What they mean: "the code path that handles what happens when you say 'no' here has been deprecated, because support for this feature was not part of the planning of a recent major-version rewrite of this app's core logic. When that rewrite is complete/passes through this part of the code, the option to say no will go away, because the code for that decision to call will be gone. So, in a literal sense, we think it's helpful to keep bugging you to switch, so that you can get used to the change in your own time before we're forced to spring it on you. But in a connotational sense, we also think it's helpful to keep bugging you to switch, as a way of protesting the dropping of this feature, because every time users see this kind of prompt, they make noise about it — and maybe this time that'll be enough to get management's attention and get the feature included in the rewrite. Make your angry comments now, before it's too late!"
I wonder how that works when they are asking to grant permission for an integration with a resource gated by OS or browser, e.g. in this case location data for the Reminders app, or showing browser notifications.
Is the deprecated path that they just don't work without enabling those settings?
And I'm sure every UX person is different. The ones who know it's a dark pattern must have some pretty strong cognitive dissonance with a company that historically sold itself as 'the good guys'.
But there's a whole generation that probably grew up with software that fundamentally doesn't respect you, and this is just normal.