Disabled Buttons UX — Usability Issues and How to Avoid Them

This article describes the impact of disabled buttons on the overall user experience (UX). What are the usability issues related to disabled buttons UX and how can we avoid them?

First, let’s learn what disabled buttons are and why they can be a reason for bad UX. The next section describes a few practical examples where disabled buttons work well. The last section shows better alternatives to a disabled button explained with practical examples.

Key Takeaways

• Whenever you feel like adding a disabled button on the UI, first ask yourself whether there is a better alternative.
• Think of the listed scenarios and try to relate your situation. Then find a better solution.
• If using disabled buttons is the only way, try to make them as convenient as possible for the users so they can understand their purpose and enable them by performing the required action.

What are disabled buttons?

A disabled button is a user interface element, typically a button, that is temporarily inactive and cannot be interacted with by the user. It is visually distinct from an active button. It is often grayed out or displayed with reduced opacity to indicate its disabled state.

Disabled buttons are commonly used in web forms and applications to convey that a specific action or functionality is currently not available based on the current state or user input.

Why disabled buttons can cause bad UX?

Below are a few common issues regarding disabled buttons UX.

Confusing for users

Users find disabled buttons ambiguous and might not understand why they cannot interact with them. Users will look at the button and think about what it does, why it is disabled, and how to enable it. They even don’t know whether it was disabled initially or it has changed its state to ‘disabled’ in response to any of their actions.

A disabled button indicates that there is an action users must do to enable it. But they need to find that action on the UI which usually causes frustration among users.