When You Should Cancel the "Cancel" Button

The cancel button confusion

The “Cancel” button has always been present on modal dialogs. You know what it means, but in certain contexts, it can greatly confuse users. When users get confused, they’ll exert extra cognitive effort to make a decision. Sometimes they can click the wrong button and get an unexpected result. This is far from a pleasant user experience.

In a password change flow, users may see a modal dialog that says, “Your session will expire and you’ll need to log in again.” Users might think “Cancel” abandons their password change, but they already changed it. This step just warns them that their session will expire. A clearer label to use is “Not Now,” so users don’t think they’re reversing the password change.