Key insights
- Hold-to-confirm turns the gesture into the safeguard: a ring fills over roughly 300ms of a held press, replacing a modal, and releasing early cancels the action entirely.
- Name the action on the button itself. Delete project / Keep project beats a generic Yes / No, because the verb is the warning and nobody reads 'Are you sure?'.
- Never place a destructive button where confirm usually lives. Muscle memory clicks primary spots blind, so moving delete elsewhere keeps autopilot from reaching it.
- Red is a budget: spend it on destruction only. A red logout button cries wolf, and then the real delete looks routine.
- Bury deletion in a bordered, labeled danger zone at the bottom of the page. Geography itself becomes friction that slows the hand.
- Give irreversible deletions a cooldown: schedule it with a grace period (for example 14 days to cancel). Time is the last line of defense.
Do / Don't
- Do: Name the destructive action on the button so the verb itself does the warning.
- Do: Reserve red for destructive actions only, and add friction like a hold gesture or a danger zone.
- Do: Give irreversible deletions a cancelable cooldown before they take effect.
- Don't: Place destructive buttons where the confirm button usually sits.
- Don't: Rely on a generic 'Are you sure?' dialog that nobody actually reads.
- Don't: Spread red across logout, badges, and alerts until delete looks routine.
