This is a lesson I learned while being system owner of the primary user interface that runs on a semiconductor factory floor. No amount of confirmation/warning dialogs will actually stop someone from doing a wrong thing. Doesn't matter how scary the language is. Here's an approximate sample of one:
"DANGER! Confirming this action may result in 8 figures worth of scrap!!!"
Even if you are super careful and make sure your error messages are terse in all cases, you will still succumb to things like muscle memory among your users. I've caught myself mindlessly dismissing these while testing. How can I expect my users to be better than the person who developed the UI? That is unreasonable.
It got to a point where we started removing these alerts/confirmations because it was training people to do the wrong thing in a few places. If you have part of a UI where all actions are immediate and final, the game theory changes. The moment a user enters into one of these spaces, they are much more cautious.
If the user thinks the UI will save them, they may eventually tire of these protections and forget why they are there in the first place. I feel like this is very similar to the problem of driver assistance and partial self-driving capabilities today.
For GitHub scary actions, I will not hesitate to copy and paste the expected repo name on the UI. I can do this so quickly my brain does not process the consequences in time.
It got to a point where we started removing these alerts/confirmations because it was training people to do the wrong thing in a few places. If you have part of a UI where all actions are immediate and final, the game theory changes. The moment a user enters into one of these spaces, they are much more cautious.
If the user thinks the UI will save them, they may eventually tire of these protections and forget why they are there in the first place. I feel like this is very similar to the problem of driver assistance and partial self-driving capabilities today.