Question

I’m working on a project about user contributed recipes and connecting them in different ways. One of the things that i used to do without thinking is whenever there is an edit form e.g. whenever the user is editing a recipe, i redirect the user to a relevant page, the Save Changes button would redirect to the recipe page, or the recipe listing page for example, but then i came across a few websites that instead of redirecting the user to another page, they show up the same edit form but with a success message.

This made more sense to me, as the user might have reached the edit recipe page in several ways, so you’re not entirely sure if you’re redirecting to a page relevant to the user.

What do you think, what would be the most appropriate design pattern to use here?

Thanks.

Answer 1

I have used both approaches. I guess it all depends on your typical user’s workflow. What would make more sense to them and make their lives easier? From the developer’s perspective, it’s definitely easier to return to the edit page since there is no need to keep track of the previous page.

Regardless of what approach you take, the important thing is to give the user the ability to get back to where they were. So if you return them to the edit screen after saving there should be a link somewhere to allow them to get back where they came from with a single click.