A notice that needs an action must not auto-dismiss
Aliases: sticky notice · notice with action · undo toast
What it is
If a notice carries an action the user must complete—Undo, View conflict, Authorize—it has been promoted to an action-required notice. It must not leave on a timer. While the action is still owed, vanishing the carrier pulls the button out of someone’s hand. Importance policy can decide whether a pure informing notice is automatic or manual; once a required action is present, the ending is locked to the action. Only “done” or “explicitly abandoned” remain.
Why it happens
A notice with an action binds reading and doing to one surface. A timer cuts the doing window: the label may have just been read, the hand not yet on the target, and the surface is gone. Undo is especially strict, because the point of the action is to reverse inside a short window; if the system unilaterally closes that window, the right to reverse becomes a lottery. Even when the action was seen, there is often no second entrance after vanish—the conflict list lived only on that notice, the authorize trigger left with it. Auto-dismiss demotes an action-required notice to an informing one, while the button’s presence still says it is not informing. The two meanings fight. People either rush to tap, or tap air and conclude they missed an unrecoverable step.
Where it stops holding
“Learn more” into a document is usually not a required action; the notice may still end as informing. If Undo also lives in history or trash, the button on the notice is a shortcut, and a timer ending no longer equals taking the reversal away—though the notice should name the other entrance, or people will not know the shortcut was not the only window. When the action takes a long time (authorize in another app), the notice must not walk away; it should become a situation until authorization returns. Per-item Undo in a bulk act piles action-required notices into a queue; one notice with Undo all is better than ten racing a timer.
Applying it
- Scan every notice that has a button. If the button is undo, repair, authorize, or view an object that must be handled, turn auto-dismiss off.
- Write the end condition as action completed or user closed. If close equals abandoning the action, provide a later entrance besides the button, or say the consequence before close.
- Do not make action-required notices vanish on “seen”; seeing is not completing.
- Verify by letting the notice appear and not tapping, waiting for it to leave on its own. If it leaves and the action has nowhere to go, the notice is reclaiming the right to act.