Dangerous proximity
Controls of different nature should be positioned with care.
Long ago I was wondering why two menu elements — “duplicate” and “delete”, both are starting with “d” but having dramatically different effects — were placed next to each other in Google Slides context menu https://useinability.wordpress.com/2012/10/25/google-got-it-wrong/
Great that Google has since separated them in that menu so that they cannot be confused accidentally. However, it seems that the danger of proximity of similarly looking commands with very different actions is not clear to many software and hardware producers.
In the example above, “Format” and “Eject” menu items are placed next to each other in the Windows external drive context menu, and one of them is clearly can be selected by an accident instead of another one. The effect of selecting “Format” instead of “Eject” may be dramatic, despite the additional confirmation dialogue window: a loss of data!
The image below is showing a part of a laptop keyboard.
Note the neighbouring location of the delete/insert and the power buttons. Both buttons have the same size and shape, so it is really easy to turn off the laptop instead of deleting a symbol, especially if one is typing without looking at the keyboard (personal experience). The consequence of such an error may be the same: a loss of data!
The frequencies of the use of these commands in both examples are also very different. It is especially clear in the second example: the Delete command is used very often while most people use the power button only for turning their computers on. Therefore, there is no reason for giving these two buttons similar accessibility and placing such them next to each other.
I hope this simple reasoning will become obvious not only to Google because the solutions are simple. The menu items can be moved apart. The keyboard keys can have different size, shapes or, for example, the power button can be moved sidewise or placed in a cavity below the surface of all the other buttons.
