Reset buttons cause more harm than good 99% of the time. I would love to meet the “genius” who thought it was a good idea to add a reset button to the bottom of a really long form.
Now I would say Never use a reset button, but I can see the 1% of the time where a reset form is useful such as for profile thumbnails (having a reset button could save some people headaches when they accidentally set a profile image to something they shouldn’t) or for a small section of a form that a person might want to clear out - but not the complete form. If someone wants to clear our a whole form, they might just hit that fancy f5 key aka refresh.
But let’s say you have to have a reset button, like it’s something your client wants so bad that they don’t care about anything else… Highly unlikely but whatever then make sure that 1- You apply a style to it that makes it clear that this button is different than the other & 2 - Think very carefully about placement. (See Below)
Which leads us to the attached image - Notice Continue comes before Cancel. Okay. Now notice they broke rule 1, well what about rule 2 you ask? Think of it this way, when you have to buttons next to each other most of the time when you do multiple step forms you have a Back Button then a Continue Button, so if someone has been filling out forms for a while they may get accustomed to clicking the button to the right because that normally is what they would click to continue along the form.
Now Rule 2 varies, I mean you could put the Continue button on top and the Cancel button on the bottom but regardless, Visually make it clear that these buttons are different, if you’re not going to do that, then be careful how you place them.
End of the Story - I clicked Cancel when I was filling out the bill payment option on my insurance form. I was pissed. I took a screenshot to make a point and I decided I’m never going to be using the online bill payment from my insurance provider. (Plus they wouldn’t let me pay with my credit card.)
