Pattern 77: Button gravity *
 AKA: One form per page

Back to Diagram 1 - Getting started Back to Diagram 2 - Usability Back to Diagram 3 - Adding detail Back to Diagram 4 - Workflow/security

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You are trying to avoid having too many pages displayed within a task, process or use case. You have therefore ESTABLISHed THE USE CASES (3) and want to give the user a SENSE OF LOCATION IN WORKFLOW (75).

Users usually scroll down to the bottom of the page, ignoring other buttons. You need to make sure they do not miss important ones.

Therefore

Design pages so that there is a single ‘submit’ button at the bottom of each page. It should be to the right of the displayed area (not the whole of a wide page). If you duplicate this button higher up then make sure it appears above the fold, even on small screens.

PIPELINE INTERACTION (78).

Contributors and sources
Paul Dyson, Dave Sissons, Spool et al.(1999)

Discussion - forces - known uses

The study by Spool et al. (1999) showed that users missed buttons that were not at the bottom of pages. Their attention ‘fell’ naturally to the bottom of pages.

To avoid this we can either insist on one button per page or make sure there are clear visual clues as to what the buttons are for and plenty of feedback when they are clicked. You might consider validating the sequence of clicks before submitting the page.

Examples
Filling in an application form.
Confirming a purchase.

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