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Comment by dgellow | Hacker News Reader

Because it is specific to a given platform and culture.

For example: https://ux.stackexchange.com/a/1077

There isn’t one standard set of guidelines. Platforms evolve, new ones come, guidelines will always be contradicting each others in weird ways (like this button positioning).

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I've seen Windows "wizards" that manage to swap them between steps.

I have a HP wide format printer where after loading in a roll of paper, it presents a "Paper loaded successfully" dialog, with an "Ok" button to dismiss the message. The fun part is that the dialog also dismisses automatically in a couple of seconds and the UI underneath has the "Unroll paper" button in the exact same position where "Ok" used to be. I must have accidentally unrolled the paper immediately after loading it in dozens of times by now.

That is just plain evil.

The only justification in my mind that makes sense for having it one way and then the next screen is the opposite is in the case of destructive actions (e.g. formatting a drive). It can help prevent users on autopilot from nuking things.

The only example of this that comes to mind is factory resetting a Nintendo Switch, but I'm sure there are much more.

If you're worried about autopilot, The button should move around so that auto pilot clicks have no effect, not change meaning. Or, require text input to confirm an action.

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