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New UX pattern? Meet the Drill-In
Inspired by a real-live compliance crisis in a big data platform.
Published in
4 min readMay 3, 2022
This pattern is not the same as the double confirmation request for an action.
The purpose of the Drill-In pattern
- To put more control into the user’s hands
- To reduce the number of errors caused by applying an action to a wrong item without visibility
- To offer users the confidence of getting the job well done
- To enable flexible and accurate undo per item
- To show the full list of affected system data in case the change occurred in the off-screen elements
- To keep the initial view simple for most of the user roles and provide additional data when needed without forcing users to readjust the view
The Flow
Long story short. This pattern offers the most value for use cases involving multiselection on a list or table as the flow’s entry point.
User multi-selects items:
Next, the user performs an action:
The action is applied right away (no double confirmation required), the system responds with a confirmation message, and the user decides to Drill-In the results of the action or ignore it and move on:
