Satpal Sharma

Verbs on Labels

Sometimes you notice simple things which can greatly enhance your user experience.

While using Windows if you try to close a document after making some changes to it the dialog box that appears shows a error message of this kind:

You’ve to read the whole message to be able to answer. Seems normal, right?

Now notice the same kind of Dialog Box in Mac OS X:

So, what’s the difference?

The answer is the use of verbs in labels (‘Save, Don’t Save’ instead of ‘Yes, No’). You wouldn’t even need to read the message to understand what the options are and which action to perform. All the information that a user needs to be able to make a decision is contained in the button labels .