141–150 of 262 posts
I always like to split error messages into two categories - developer-facing and user-facing. The former is geared towards diagnosis, the latter is an act of customer service. The two should never be intertwined - I see this happen way more often than I should. When you present a user-facing error message, it's akin to admitting a failure of some kind. Whether it's a user error or a system error, the customer-centric…
I don't even like "We" in UI messages. "We couldn't find that site." "We're just updating your computer." Perhaps I'm just an old fogey, but passive voice feels like the only right choice: "The site could not be found." "Your computer is being updated." The insertion of "We" feels like an imposition; the company who wrote the code reaching in and enacting their will with your equipment, using your screen as their soa…
I don't even like verbs: "site not found" "software updating" edit: better: "update in progress"
I don't even like "We" in UI messages. "We couldn't find that site." "We're just updating your computer." Perhaps I'm just an old fogey, but passive voice feels like the only right choice: "The site could not be found." "Your computer is being updated." The insertion of "We" feels like an imposition; the company who wrote the code reaching in and enacting their will with your equipment, using your screen as their soa…
>"The site could not be found." >"Your computer is being updated." But without the we, it is all passive voice. My English professors in college all hated passive voice.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Out of interest what places are those?
In addition to the other couple of replies that mention Japan, I would suggest, just start paying attention to this in the sense of deliberative practice, and you may find that your brain has been doing more editing on your social interactions than you may have realized. Sometimes the hardest things to see are the things we deal with all the time because our brains just read them as baseline. There's only a handful o…
I always like to split error messages into two categories - developer-facing and user-facing. The former is geared towards diagnosis, the latter is an act of customer service. The two should never be intertwined - I see this happen way more often than I should. When you present a user-facing error message, it's akin to admitting a failure of some kind. Whether it's a user error or a system error, the customer-centric…
"Sorry, you filled out the form incorrectly"
Tell me what went wrong so I can figure out how to fix it. I don’t care whose fault it is or how very sorry they are for the mistake. Even saying “the website you are trying to contact is down” can be misleading, maybe it’s not down, maybe I’ve lost my internet connection or the ip changed and dns hasn’t updated, or I have some rule locally that is redirecting me incorrectly. Guiding someone into an assumption is harmful and a waste of time, if not dangerous.
I understand that consumer stuff is all about dumbing down the experience so that an idiot can do the thing (we should strive for the most idiot proof interface possible), but that design principle is useless when things go wrong and you need to fix it.
I don't even like "We" in UI messages. "We couldn't find that site." "We're just updating your computer." Perhaps I'm just an old fogey, but passive voice feels like the only right choice: "The site could not be found." "Your computer is being updated." The insertion of "We" feels like an imposition; the company who wrote the code reaching in and enacting their will with your equipment, using your screen as their soa…
I don't even like "We" in UI messages. "We couldn't find that site." "We're just updating your computer." Perhaps I'm just an old fogey, but passive voice feels like the only right choice: "The site could not be found." "Your computer is being updated." The insertion of "We" feels like an imposition; the company who wrote the code reaching in and enacting their will with your equipment, using your screen as their soa…
>"The site could not be found." >"Your computer is being updated." But without the we, it is all passive voice. My English professors in college all hated passive voice.