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How bad error messages are harming your users
Do’s and don’ts for better error messages.
In 2015, before I wrote on Medium, I wrote this article on my personal website https://www.kaylaheffernan.com/blog/2014/12/9/error-messages. For some reason, according to the analytics on kaylaheffernan.com, this has had a recent spike in readers so I thought I would cross-post to Medium to reach more people. Slightly updated from the original to flow better.
Research from 2009 (Riedl, R et al, 2009) showed error messages can increase cortisol (the stress hormone) levels in individuals when they were interacting with computers that faced a system breakdown. Our error messages are increasing stress and anxiety. This has been illustrated before by Jennifer Aldrich of User Experience Rocks (see comic below).
We have a responsibility to carefully consider our error messages as to not harm our users. Good error messages are particularly important as they:
- Increase speed of use;
- Increase users subjective satisfaction with our sites; and,
- Reduce repeat errors and complaints while increasing the learnability of the system.
These three mean that users can ‘self-serve’ and correct errors allowing them to complete their goal (and give your company money!). This also saves on support costs if fewer people are raising tickets or calling a help centre. Thanks to James McGinty for reminding me to make this explicit.
So, how do you write good error messages?
I’ve put together a list of some do’s and don’ts for good error messages.
Errors happen. But the golden rule should be prevention first. Make it easy for your users to input the data in the correct format and explain to them exactly what they need to do. Errors should be a last resort. Then, when you do need to show error messages follow these do’s and don'ts.
Do the following
- Be explicit and indicate something has gone wrong
