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Comment by RussianCow | Hacker News Reader

> So the answer from this veteran UX designer would be: Use whichever placement your users are going to be the most familiar with, but whichever you choose, be 100% consistent with the choice you make.

Not only that, but make the "OK" choice standout with a different color. If the "default" option is brighter than the rest, your eyes will most likely gravitate towards it first, regardless of the order of the buttons.

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In my bank web application the OK button is on the left, and... both buttons are RED because that's the brand's color!

It's a terrible web app.

Speaking of banks with terrible websites, my credit union's login page features a checkbox for "Forgot my password", which is not only confusing in and of itself (" I need to enter my password to reset it?") but also is exactly where you'd expect the "Remember me?" checkbox to appear, meaning that any instinctual attempt for me to tell the site to remember who I am will instead result in me resetting my password.

I'm entirely convinced that banking website design guidelines are driven entirely by a seething hatred for the end-user.

They paid someone a lot of money to design their UI, so they better do something different from the rest of the world, else they would have wasted money.

> I'm entirely convinced that banking website design guidelines are driven entirely by a seething hatred for the end-user.

I've thought about this and (in all seriousness) I think the reason is that the tech banking sector must be plagued with ancient programmers that don't give a damn about UI and design.

Better yet, follow the Apple dialog guidelines for labeling buttons and eschew the ambiguity of "OK".

Those Human Interface Guidelines are incredible. There is also an Apple Style Guide that’s very awesome as well. For example, “don’t use ‘please’ as in “Please click yes to continue.” Instead, simply “click yes to continue.” I forget the rationale but it was pretty sound reasoning if I remember correctly.

Rationale is probably primarily that it’s just less wordy and secondarily that it sounds like an option instead of a request.

Additionally, if the OK option is something major and irreversible or destructive, make that different color be red, and change the OK to be what the operation is (Delete, Erase, etc.)

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