Haven't seen it done anywhere, personally. But wow, that's baaaad. High-five for pointing it out.

Isn't checkbox descriptive enough as to what the shape should be?

I am not a designer and I know that is stupid.

See that “Remote Friendly” control? It’s a trick control. It looks like a radio button, but it behaves like a checkbox. It’s deceptive. It leads us to expect one kind of behavior, then does something else.

A deceptive trick control? Aren't you being a bit harsh? As someone else pointed out, it's a single selection control in which case it most probably works well. Along with being a little bit confusing, yes.

Making a checkbox round is like labeling the Push side of a door Pull.

I'm not defending these mistakes at all and I agree with you, but this is also an unnecesary hyperbole. And in the second case it might have also been a frontend dev's error.

Designers are really eager to nitpick each others work, especially online where there's practically no accountability for your actions. That's what I have noticed lately.

Sorry that you are getting trolled on about this article. Leave it to designers to get upset when they are told they should follow a pattern instead of doing it new whenever they want.

With that said this fully comes down to user expectations and I fully agree with you that you have to be mindful of this. I think the problem does come down more to when you have two different checkboxes; however, it would be interesting to do some user research around this and ask them what they think.

Now thinking about it, it might be that some are not trying to troll at all but would prefer to see some research to back these allegations. Anyways ... thanks for providing your input. Very valuable indeed.

The "checkboxes" in the native iOS reminders app are round and aren't very confusing (anyone think otherwise?). So maybe not never... But I do agree that they don't work well in those examples given though.

X is never Y is a luddite attitude.

"He could even select neither option and still click “Subscribe”. I have no idea what that does."

I giggled.

The funny thing is that I've found the case of using round radio buttons as checkboxes on Google IO 2015 site this year. I've pointed it to them on Twitter (https://twitter.com/Murrzeak/status/598853093430800385) and just noticed that they've changed it :)

I feel like the second one is almost a dark pattern where they're trying to get you to sign up for both daily/weekly updates. I would assume this would probably annoy more people and make them opt out.

I think the first one is fine. It kind of needs a pair to make the confusion. And it has a fancy effect. What botters me, is that when you multiple click it, it will use the os system's color as background.

http://f.cl.ly/items/3C1K19090o0G2W2n1d1V/click.gif

I've actually experienced the opposite, the page has a list of options where only one of them can be picked, but the designer uses checkboxes.

I wrote about it, wondering what leads designers to do this when there's supposed to be a convention that exists. Like is it ok to break those rules now, or does nobody care about the distinction anymore?

Hey Dan. Just saw this link is down. Curious if you had a change of heart based on the current state of UI?

If so, I'd love to hear what changed your mind!

You politically correct freaks on here are on a whole nother level.

The consequence of clicking is both apparent and reversible... I wish more dark patterns were like that ;)

I agree with the author if the platform is web desktop. But if it's mobile there are many native apps that do rounded checkboxes.

On the first case, you are assuming users expect one behavior, but I'm not that sure the average guy knows or even bothers about it.

This seems like a gratuitous attack, which only makes design scarier for newcomers.

Slow news week