85. People Will Always Make Mistakes; There is no fail-safe product.

85. People Will Always Make Mistakes

Use Marketing Automation To Avoid Human Error (image/jpeg)

Caption: : clipartuse.com

Assume that something will go wrong

Something will always go wrong! Could be the fault of the user, software, or designer. It is very hard to create an error-free system.  It is much more expensive and time-consuming, and you will never fully succeed. When in the testing phase make sure you're utilizing the people who will actually be using your product. They will know best which errors are most egregious.  Think ahead to what the likely mistakes will be. Find out through testing the mistakes people are making and correct them.

The best error message is no error message

We never want to see the error message, but when something does go wrong it’s important that people know what to do about it.    

How to write an error message Tell the person what they did Explain the problem Instruct the person how to correct it Write in plain language using active, not passive, voice Show an example

Good vs. Bad Error message

Point85 (binary/octet-stream)

For an additional resource for designing good error messages check out this article from UX Planet.

Caption: : UXplanet.org