UX Design Question: Should a multi step wizard save the form contents when the user clicks 'go back'

Posted by Ashwin Prabhu on Stack Overflow See other posts from Stack Overflow or by Ashwin Prabhu
Published on 2010-06-02T11:31:55Z Indexed on 2010/06/02 11:33 UTC
Read the original article Hit count: 297

Filed under:

best-practices

|

user-interface

|

web-design

|

UX

I am developing a web application that collects data over multiple steps through a wizard. Steps are generally not interdependent, in that data input at each step has little or no effect on the consequent steps. However each step may have a set of validations which determine whether the user can progress to the next step by clicking 'continue'

What should be the behavior when the user clicks previous?

a> Quickly move to the previous page, thus losing all the unsaved data in the form. Prompting the user with a warning is an option, but it can become irritating quite soon.

b> Move to the previous page saving all the data in the current step - without triggering validations, so that when the user comes back she sees the form in the same state that she left it in.

c> any other behaviour

All opinions are welcome :)

© Stack Overflow or respective owner

Related posts about best-practices

Batch Best Practices and Technical Best Practices Updated

as seen on Oracle Blogs - Search for 'Oracle Blogs'
The Batch Best Practices for Oracle Utilities Application Framework based products (Doc Id: 836362.1) and Technical Best Practices for Oracle Utilities Application Framework Based Products (Doc Id: 560367.1) have been updated with updated and new advice for the various versions of the Oracle… >>> More
Partial template specialization of free functions - best practices

as seen on Stack Overflow - Search for 'Stack Overflow'
As most C++ programmers should know, partial template specialization of free functions is disallowed. For example, the following is illegal C++: template <class T, int N> T mul(const T& x) { return x * N; } template <class T> T mul<T, 0>(const T& x) { return T(0); } //… >>> More
Object Oriented PHP Best Practices

as seen on Stack Overflow - Search for 'Stack Overflow'
Say I have a class which represents a person, a variable within that class would be $name. Previously, In my scripts I would create an instance of the object then set the name by just using: $object->name = "x"; However, I was told this was not best practice? That I should have a function set_name()… >>> More
Good place to look for example Database Designs - Best practices

as seen on Stack Overflow - Search for 'Stack Overflow'
I have been given the task to design a database to store a lot of information for our company. Because the task is rather big and contains multiple modules where users should be able to do stuff, I'm worried about designing a good data model for this. I just don't want to end up with a badly designed… >>> More
Notification Email Best Practices--From Server Setup to Programming

as seen on Stack Overflow - Search for 'Stack Overflow'
All, I'm in the process now of building a SaaS tool that allows network admins to generate notification emails to the members of the end-users of our platform (among many many other things). I'm running into a bit of an "out of my expertise" wall, as I know there are a lot of variables involved… >>> More

Related posts about user-interface

Design For Asynchronous User Interface

as seen on Programmers - Search for 'Programmers'
I have been working on a integration that has posed an interesting user interface conundrum that I would like suggestions for. The user interface is displayed within a third party product. The state of the interface is supplied by calls to a service I have written. There can be small delays between… >>> More
User Interface Annoyances

as seen on Super User - Search for 'Super User'
I am looking for some of the most annoying user interface features that are common and keep being repeated. The first one that comes to mind is the modal pop up message box that developers like to use to let you know you did something right, but gets frustrating the 1000th time you have to close… >>> More
UI message passing programming paradigm

as seen on Programmers - Search for 'Programmers'
I recently (about two months ago) read an article that explained some user interface paradigm that I can't remember the name of and I also can't find the article anymore. The paradigm allows for decoupling the user interface and backend through message passing (via some queueing implementation).… >>> More
How to Implement "Code Bubble" like User Interface?

as seen on Stack Overflow - Search for 'Stack Overflow'
The new Code Bubble IDE has been in the news. I wonder if there are useful libraries to implement this kind of interface (for other applications)? I prefer java or python. I understand Code Bubble has been implemented on Eclipse. >>> More
Improving in the MonoDevelop user interface

as seen on Internet.com - Search for 'Internet.com'
<b>Food For Monkeys:</b> "In the past weeks (actually, months) I've been doing some changes in the MonoDevelop GUI to make it more functional and better looking. Here is the result:" >>> More