So where did the OK button come from? It first appeared widespread on Mac OS 1.0, but it really started before that during the development of the Apple Lisa.
When the software required confirmation from the user, it displayed a small window called a “dialog box”, that contained a question, and presented two buttons, for positive or negative confirmation. The buttons were labeled “Do It” and “Cancel”. The designers observed that a few users seemed to stumble at the point that the dialog was displayed, clicking “Cancel” when they should have clicked “Do It”, but it wasn’t clear what they were having trouble with.
Finally, the team noticed one user that was particularly flummoxed by the dialog box, who even seemed to be getting a bit angry. The moderator interrupted the test and asked him what the problem was. He replied, “I’m not a dolt, why is the software calling me a dolt?”
It turns out he wasn’t noticing the space between the ‘o’ and the ‘I’ in ‘Do It’; in the sans-serif system font we were using, a capital ‘I’ looked very much like a lower case ‘l’, so he was reading ‘Do It’ as ‘Dolt’ and was therefore kind of offended.
After a bit of consideration, we switched the positive confirmation button label to ‘OK’ (which was initially avoided, because we thought it was too colloquial), and from that point on people seemed to have fewer problems.
Interesting. “Do it!” is the same as previous versions of Enter or Execute. It’s commanding the machine to do something. OK is acquiescing to the machine, forming a partnership. In the end, the simple OK button may have contributed to the success of the Macintosh. It changed the relationship between person and computer, away from the master and slave mentality toward a friendlier world where the computer is a partner.
I’m not sure we’re there yet.
If you want to see some of this stuff, the GUI Gallery is invaluable:
http://toastytech.com/guis/index.html
There are some Lisa shots, but in my quick perusal, despite finding several buttons, I found no “OK” buttons.
At first blush, I thought, “The dialog box *shouldv’e said, `You are a moron!’ instead of “Dolt,” but now I’m trying to imagine seeing a computer dialog box for the first time and having to focus on what it’s saying. Most of us today pay scant attention to anything that pops up, unless something is obviously wrong.
[…] The origins of the OK button. […]
The OK button is one of the biggest flaws in modern software design.
Instead of a button being labeled as OK it should be labeled with what the button actually does. It’s a stupid button that annoys me when ever I see it.
It’s funny that you would mention the “master and slave” thing. I once worked for a person - sweetest person in the world, really - who was offended by the references to “master” and “slave” during her PC’s powerup sequence, due to her ancestry. I disagreed on principle, but kept my mouth shut about it and just told her I didn’t know of any way to change or hide it.
[…] klassiker: Historia om OK-knappen (som skulle heitt Do […]
“Instead of a button being labeled as OK it should be labeled with what the button actually does. ”
That’s a ridiculous idea. Most functions cannot be described in the space a button label takes. That’s what the dialog box text is for. And it would totally defeat the point of the general-purpose “OK” button on hardware. Are you going to demand a physical button for every function a device performs? Of course not. You use the screen for the visual cues, and the “OK” button for agreeing to the action.
I’m sure glad that you are not an interface designer, and we ended up with the versatile and beautiful-in-its-simplicity “OK” button.
I’ve seen dialog boxes that try to put descriptive text on buttons, and they are awful. Much harder to decipher than “OK/Cancel,” they really slow the user down and make the interface ugly.
Sometimes those dialog boxes appear and tell you that something unexpected has gone wrong and gives you one button to push, which may say “close” or “done”, and I think this should say “whatever”, because that’s exactly what I say whenever I click on it!
Huh, that’s funny, I’ve never seen anyone else talk about this. As I was teaching a friend of mine to use his Mac, he was very disturbed by those OK buttons, most particularly in situations where the computer was telling him it wouldn’t or couldn’t do what he wanted. He didn’t like that his only option was to say that not getting what he wanted was “OK”.
[…] by kiwiscanfly on July 27th, 2007 From folklore.org via History of the Button… When the software required confirmation from the user, it displayed a small window called a […]
This probably isn’t the right place for this but since I am seeing the comments on the OK button I thought I’d post this here anyway. I received an email joke a few years back that said “You want buttons honey” and then the OK button came up and when you clicked on it a bunch more “OK” buttons popped up real fast to cover your entire screen. You had to click on each one in order to clear the screen. I don’t know if that is still around but I can’t find it and I thought it was funny. Does anyone know about this?
[…] is that this simple change reflected a new way of thinking about human-machine interaction. HOTB goes on to suggest: “Do it!” is the same as previous versions of Enter or Execute. It’s […]
The OK button on an error dialog is one of the reasons to NOT pop up dialogs. Give them something to fix the error, rather than just telling them about it. Better yet, make it so the software can fix the error itself or never get into the error situation in the first place.
Tell the user that there’s a problem where the problem occurs, not by putting up something in their face.
I’m even trying to move away from the confirmation dialog-don’t make the user get into a situation where they need to make the decision unless it’s a deadly undoable thing.
[…] I have just read the article “The OK Button origin“ […]