Category: Usability

This page was last modified 11:57, 27 November 2007.

From Forum Nokia Wiki

Have you ever run into an error message that just didn’t make any sense? I know I have! It’s rather annoying to get a notice that says the system will be shut down but not telling why. Have I done something wrong? Did I push a button I wasn’t supposed to? WHAT HAPPENED??

There are guidelines for designing error messages. The main point to remember is to tell the user:

• something has gone wrong (Use a red exclamation point, for example, to get the users attention)
• what has gone wrong (Use sensible language. Most users don’t understand technical terms)
• what to do about it (Help the user to recover from the occurred error)

So NOT like this:

NOTE: This error message was made for this occasion with Atom Smasher’s Error Message Generator.

For more guidelines, read Jakob Nielsen’s Error Message Guidelines and Tim Fidgeon’s article Error Messages - What to do.