The other day I was adding a delete action for an application. I added the standard red button and was just about to implement the default confirmation dialog (“Are you sure you want to delete this item? OK / Cancel”) before realizing how dialogs in general annoy me.

The problem, as I see it, is that there is somewhat of a context switch. You leave the application and are sent to Dialog Land. Admittedly, you seldom stay long in Dialog Land, but you are broken out of your current flow. It can be argued that this is the point, since this break of context means the user is forced to consider if they really do want the go through with the action. We should of course do this in the case of irreversible actions, but is a modal dialog really the only way?

I read an interesting post by Dustin Curtis a while back called Yours vs. Mine. It dealt with wording in user interfaces, and the argument he made was that my refers to something that is an extension of myself, whereas your more closely resembles another social being that we can communicate with. In other words, the difference was wheter or not we consider the user interface to be a part of us or simply something we communicate with, and in his opinion (spoiler alert!) “Your stuff” would be the way to go.