One of my customers recently asked for an additional confirmation dialog.

Whilst in general it is ok to confirm that an action should be performed it is important not to add confirmations and every time a confirmation dialog is added it needs to be accessed is this really necessary. What are the effects of performing this action accidently.

Excess confirmation are the bane of user life – personally I despise them, they kill productivity and become meaningless as the more “Are you sure you want to do this?” confirmations become ignored and not an extra layer of protection.

As an interface designer, I need to argue against adding them unnecessarily. An operator should not have privileges if they can’t be careful enough. And if they do an action accidently and it is not dangerous then it should not be difficult to find what you did and undo it.