This isn't really surprising. The article claimed he just knew from experience and didn't need to do a test, so the whole article was just bullshit.
I was laughing out loud when he said users read all the options before picking one anyway, since I've seen that not happen in countless tests. Users don't generally give a crap about your interface, won't read instructions or screens fully, and will just scan and grab on to something that matches their current goal.
The lukew eye tracking study is for forms, not dialog boxes. And not just any forms, but it looks only at forms which have a list of left-aligned items which the user is working and scanning down. As stated: "the alignment of actions with a form’s input elements provides a clear path to completion that helps people complete forms faster."
This article is about dialog boxes. They are different. Dialog boxes usually have no form input elements and usually do not have a list of items all aligned on the left like on the lukew tracking study.
I do not think that comes to the opposite result. The only variant they test that has Cancel, OK in that order also is the only one where the rightmost button is far away from the other content. How far way, the report does not state. Being a web study, this could have been dependent on window width.
The study also doesn't go into the consequences of various error rates. It is just about “Please complete the form fully and accurately". It does not test average performance if, say, users want to cancel out of the input in 5% of cases. It does not even ask me whether they feel confident that they can do so if they want.
This isn't really surprising. The article claimed he just knew from experience and didn't need to do a test, so the whole article was just bullshit.
I was laughing out loud when he said users read all the options before picking one anyway, since I've seen that not happen in countless tests. Users don't generally give a crap about your interface, won't read instructions or screens fully, and will just scan and grab on to something that matches their current goal.