A little helpfulness and humor goes a long way

Invariably things will go wrong with your application and most users understand that. Just like a car that occasionally breaks down, people usually expect applications to fail once in a while. But how you communicate that your application is broken is important. This not only helps users to recover from problems, but will foster understanding towards your application when these errors occur.

The Gmail module on the iGoogle web page demonstrates how error messages should not be done:

• The message shown to users when the service isn’t working is too vague: “Information is temporarily unavailable.” Nothing is communicated to the user why the information is unavailable. Is the service down? Or is the user just not logged into Gmail?
• The user is not told how this error can be fixed and when they can expect to have access to their email again.
• The tone of the error message is dry. This makes it feel more machine-like and less relatable to the end user.

When error messages are well-written, they are both informative and friendly. Error messages should tell a person what went wrong and how to fix it (when possible.)

These messages should also have a warm and friendly tone that fits the application. For example, humor and casual wording is fine for an ecommerce website. But a line of business application should have a more serious and professional tone.

Etsy, the craft reseller website, has some great error messages as shown in the example below:

• The message not only tells the user what has gone wrong (“Sorry, the item listing you are looking for does not exist.”), it also provides ways for the user to easily recover from the error (“Go back to Etsy.com”.)
• The content is written in a warm and conversational manner. Words, such as “uh oh” and “sorry”, make the application seem less machine-like.
• The image of the crafter making a mistake that accompanies the error message adds a bit of humor in a way that adds to the user experience. For line of business applications, humor at this level probably isn’t appropriate, but for websites like Etsy this works well.

Next time you are charged with writing error messages for your application, keep these points in mind. These messages are easy to dismiss as not important to the user experience of your product, but you can see how even getting this communication right can add to an overall user experience.