Halfway through this essentially true, but rather abstract, review of efficient design, it is claimed that the “Word has finished searching the document” alert is very, very wrong. Verbatim from the article: “You’d think that such dialog boxes would only appear on web sites circa 1994, but in the latest version of Word, I found this lurking: (image of the alert) [..] To all designers out there: please never do this. There’s no excuse.”
In Office 2007, the Office UI designers did remove a very similar (identical in purpose to a very similar function) dialog saying “The spelling check is complete.“. The response was a windfall of user complaints. Some were undoubtedly “OMG YOU HAVE CHANGED THINGS THIS WILL NOT STAND” kinds of complaints. However, my guess is that most of those who complained genuinely needed that alert. The dialog was put back.
You could argue that the alert should automatically go away after a few seconds (which has usability issues of its own). You could argue that the alert is much needed. You could argue that people using other programs never ask for a similar alert, so the need for an alert is invented by behavior in Office programs. You could argue something completely different. Which is correct? I have no idea, but it’s clear that in any event, and no matter how much I believe in the premise of the original article, there’s more to this than the dismissive “Please never do this. There’s no excuse.”
Update: Michael Tsai has more to say.