This is art
This Message Does Not Exist
141–150 of 278 posts
Re: This Message Does Not Exist
#142Everyone is snickering at this and talking about philosophy, but there is actually a legitimate point being made here, albeit obliquely: how do you explain to a non-technical user that their data has been deleted on the server, but that their client still has a cached copy that they might want to try to salvage somehow? I submit that this is a nontrivial problem worthy of serious consideration.
Some good passes at UX copy in this thread, but for this application, I’d recommend against trying to explain the underlying technical mechanism at play and instead frame it in terms of outcomes. “This message has been deleted, but you still have a temporary copy. If you need to save anything from it, you should do so before discarding the temporary copy.”
This is the best one so far. Combine that with the 'if you refresh this page the text will disappear' from another poster and I think we have a very workable error message that outlines the issue, solution, and due caution necessary, for the potentially non-technical user.
Re: This Message Does Not Exist
#143Earlier quoted context omitted.
> how do you explain to a non-technical user that their data has been deleted on the server, but that their client still has a cached copy that they might want to try to salvage somehow? How about: "This message has been deleted from the mail server, but Outlook still has it in its temporary cache on this device. You can copy the message contents, or discard it from the cache, at which point it will be permanently de…
A typical person's head will explode at the mention of the words "cache" and "server". They will then go into a blind panic that their data is going to be "permanently deleted".
Not an issue, replace server with the cloud and remove cache, temporary is fine
Re: This Message Does Not Exist
#144Everyone is snickering at this and talking about philosophy, but there is actually a legitimate point being made here, albeit obliquely: how do you explain to a non-technical user that their data has been deleted on the server, but that their client still has a cached copy that they might want to try to salvage somehow? I submit that this is a nontrivial problem worthy of serious consideration.
> how do you explain to a non-technical user that their data has been deleted on the server, but that their client still has a cached copy that they might want to try to salvage somehow? How about: "This message has been deleted from the mail server, but Outlook still has it in its temporary cache on this device. You can copy the message contents, or discard it from the cache, at which point it will be permanently de…
Funny of you to think your non-technical uncle is aware that there is such a thing as "mail server". All they know is that this email thing works, in the sense that he can send and receive emails.
Re: This Message Does Not Exist
#145Earlier quoted context omitted.
But this is claiming that the letter does not exist, while allowing you to read the contents of the letter. If it can show you the content, the container must exist!
In a post office, open a letter, burn the envelope. The content now exists, but the message does not.
but that implies the message is the envelope, which is not typically what a message means.
Re: This Message Does Not Exist
#146Earlier quoted context omitted.
> how do you explain to a non-technical user that their data has been deleted on the server, but that their client still has a cached copy that they might want to try to salvage somehow? How about: "This message has been deleted from the mail server, but Outlook still has it in its temporary cache on this device. You can copy the message contents, or discard it from the cache, at which point it will be permanently de…
this is the only correct answer. "a non-technical user has no idea what a server or cache is" sure, but they can learn. The average person is much smarter than you think they are (when it comes to matters that actually affect their day to day life). If they don't get your explanation, it's almost always because (1) they don't care, they don't see why it matters to them (it often doesn't) (2) you're not explaining it…
> but they can learn.
though do they want to?
If they can learn, they would've. And then cease being a non-technical user.
Re: This Message Does Not Exist
#147I once screen-shotted an intranet application at my work asking the unintentional koan, "One does not exist", next to a button that said, "Create".
Re: This Message Does Not Exist
#148Earlier quoted context omitted.
A typical person's head will explode at the mention of the words "cache" and "server". They will then go into a blind panic that their data is going to be "permanently deleted".
Yeah you can't use words like that. Even many people who won't panic at the word "server" don't really understand what it is. "This message no longer exists in your Inbox. If you close it, you will not be able to open it again." What's more amazing is that this state actually happens often enough in Outlook that somebody wrote code to detect it, and to create a message box for the user to warn them about it.
every warning or labelling of an issue is because it happened to somebody, and it needed to be prevented.
It's true in the physical world - signs like 'beware of falling pottery' for example. The electronic world is a facsimile of the real world!
Re: This Message Does Not Exist
#149Everyone is snickering at this and talking about philosophy, but there is actually a legitimate point being made here, albeit obliquely: how do you explain to a non-technical user that their data has been deleted on the server, but that their client still has a cached copy that they might want to try to salvage somehow? I submit that this is a nontrivial problem worthy of serious consideration.
You don't. Explaining what happened is not going to help the user at all. You can only explain what options are available to the user. Something like the following "Sorry, this message can no longer be saved. Copy this message before discarding it if you will need access to it later."
"Copy it to where?"
Or, "Can't i just restore it out of the trash?"
Re: This Message Does Not Exist
#150Everyone is snickering at this and talking about philosophy, but there is actually a legitimate point being made here, albeit obliquely: how do you explain to a non-technical user that their data has been deleted on the server, but that their client still has a cached copy that they might want to try to salvage somehow? I submit that this is a nontrivial problem worthy of serious consideration.
You don't. Explaining what happened is not going to help the user at all. You can only explain what options are available to the user. Something like the following "Sorry, this message can no longer be saved. Copy this message before discarding it if you will need access to it later."
Sorry but hard disagree on this one. This increasingly popular assumption that users are clueless cavemen is very condescending. Help the user self diagnose instead.
WHY can’t it be saved?
Is the internet not connected? Check your WiFi.
Is the server full? Talk to admin.
Is the message deleted by another user? Talk to your team about ways of working?
Is it an internal application error? Tough luck, maybe the error code can be googled at least.
This does not mean you need to dump a stack trace in the users face, the examples above can still be presented briefly. If that’s too much effort to implement, consider an expandable details section.
The amount of applications lately where I had to open the verbose developer logs only to find silly user fixable errors is astonishing. Last one was simply credentials that had expired.
To anyone who thinks you are giving the users a magical experience, free from technicalities, by hiding root causes behind a facade of abstract, please think again. You are just frustrating the users even more, by making errors unpredictable.