People don't read dialogs

I'm not surprised with these results. [Link]

Of the 42 students, 26 clicked the OK button for the "real" dialog. But 25 clicked the same button for two of the fakes, and 23 hit OK on the third (the one with the status bar showing). Only nine of them closed the window—two fewer than had closed the real dialog. In all cases, a few of the users simply minimized the window or dragged it out of the way, presumably leaving the machine's next user at risk.

The response time, which tracked how long it took the users to perform any action, was not significantly different among the different dialogs, indicating that there wasn't even any thought expended on evaluating the fakes.

Follow-up questions revealed that the students seemed to find any dialog box a distraction from their assigned task; nearly half said that all they cared about was getting rid of these dialogs. The results suggest that a familiarity with Windows dialogs have bred a degree of contempt and that users simply don't care what the boxes say anymore.

Part of this is lack of attention on the part of users and the rest is on the shoulders of programmers. Poor design and practices led to too many dialogs that turned dialog awareness into the desktop equivalent of crickets.

If there is an error, and a decision has to be made, we give the user the choice, even if there is an obvious right answer. Adding warning dialogs as a CYA against actions that a user takes means it's not our fault, we showed them a dialog. That happens constantly.