Error Messages: Designing for Error — Part 3
Error message = obstacle
Error messages are like barrier arms for the users, they can’t reach their goals while the arm is down. And lifting this arm requires cognitive effort (e.g. they have to understand what happened and how they can proceed).
Different aspects
The sketch summarizes these aspects:
- Content
- Placement, position
- Styling
- Tone, Voice and other UX writing aspects
and it also contains some general advice.
The most important advice
The best solution is not using error messages at all, strive for that in every cases (of course in some cases you won’t be able to avoid using them, e.g. in case of a 404 page).
Previous parts of the series
This sketch is the 3rd part of the Design for Error series, in the previous parts I explained how we can design products and services in a way that supports error-prevention and facilitates recovery from errors. Here you can check out the first part, and here is a link to the second part.
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Related Sketches
Recommended Reading & Useful Links
- Yifrah, K. (2017.) Microcopy — The Complete Guide, Chapter 7. Error Messages
- Error Message Guidelines
- The art of the error message
- Common Types of Error Messages (pdf)
- How to Write a Perfect Error Message
- How to Write Good Error Messages
- How to write a great error message
- Error Messages
- How To Design Error States For Mobile Apps
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