I think if I were a new user, I’d be stumped here with absolutely no idea how to proceed. I pressed the “Cancel Download” button on an Amazon Photos pop-up, and got this message box as a result:

(And before you say anything, the “three dots” menu up there just has notification options settings.)

The stated options here, as I see it, are:

1. Cancel the download, possibly causing Amazon Photos to crash.
2. Block the app. Which disables downloads until I go fiddle with the options.

But there’s a third option: Press the “X” button in the upper right corner and …? The popup text for that button says “Move this notification to the notification center”. But I have absolutely no idea what effect that will have on the download.

I think many users will be confused by this notification, primarily because it’s trying to convey too much information and in doing so fails to convey some critical information.

Popup notifications like this should present a clear and unambiguous warning message, and two options: do the thing, or don’t do the thing. Nothing else. Just those two unambiguous and clearly marked options: “Do It”, and “Don’t”.

But this notification is a mess. It does have a clear and unambiguous warning message. But then there’s this extraneous information about blocking the app, information that can only serve to confuse the user. And there are two clearly marked options. But they’re labeled “do the thing” and “do something else.”

What if I don’t want to do either one? Oh, well, that’s a third option, clearly marked by the “X” up there in the corner.

I contend that the “Block app” option shouldn’t be there. The text about blocking the app should be replaced with “To change automatic download settings, go to Settings > Automatic file downloads”. And the options should be “Cancel Download” and “Continue Download”. And the “X” button can continue to do what it’s doing (nothing, I think) to the download.

I don’t know what UI genius came up with this design, but I’m surprised that it was approved. Probably there’s some silly internal UI standards document that says notifications can have only up to two buttons. There’s nothing in the standards doc about clear and unambiguous choices. Somebody decided they needed three options, and used the dialog close button (the “X”) to provide the third. Technically, it meets the standard . . .