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Funny error messages in general are pretty annoying to deal with when it's an actual exception as opposed to something relatively simple like an HTTP 404. I adm
by csydas 9y ago
Funny error messages in general are pretty annoying to deal with when it's an actual exception as opposed to something relatively simple like an HTTP 404. I admittedly have a bias since I've worked in Tech most of my life and am used to being able to solve technical problems, and it's very frustrating to be told "Whoops! Something went wrong" or "Oh no! There's a problem! We'll dispatch a team of ninja monkeys to fix it!" when all you want is more information. What specifically went wrong? Is it on my side, is it on the website or application's side? What steps can I take to actually fix this, since I've tried again multiple times already?
I'm sure I'm sitting on the wrong side of countless user studies that say to the contrary, but when an exception or problem occurs, I really dislike the feeling of helplessness. Something isn't working the way it is supposed to, and often times I can only rely on myself to fix it; this is particularly relevant for companies with non-existent support services, like Google, where you're basically at the mercy of what other more adventurous and capable users are able to fix on their own. To me, tossing up a "funny" error message when there is no support channel is incredibly frustrating, because not only is there no one I can ask for assistance, I can't even do research myself because I have nothing to go on except for a caricature of the WebDevs or a Frowny-Face and the steps leading up to the problem.
Again, I'm sure I'm on the wrong side of countless studies here, but I can't figure out how this is better than at least some sort of error message.
- gsich 9y agoProbably, but this just because studies include non-tech people too. For them a useless help message is ... well not useful. But at least it doesn't confuse them with tech words. For tech people it is also useless, so I don't know who those error messages should help. I also dislike the first person error messages. "We are sending ...", "Let me fix this" when you are clearly 'talking' to a computer.
- bionoid 9y ago> I'm sure I'm sitting on the wrong side of countless user studies that say to the contrary This is completely off topic, but I was a UX study participant last year, it was an interesting experience. They told me to do as I usually do when surfing the web, and to verbalize my thought process. I opened the website, and a huge nonmodal advertisement to win some $15 piece of garbage pops up. On pure instinct I click ctrl-w to close the tab, and state "what an obnoxious advertisement, I am boycotting this site". It went downhill from there.
- seer 9y agoThe sad thing is that if you were the sort of person that would click on that ad - you’d probably be gullible enough to pay for whats sitting on the end of that link. So making it obnoxious is actually giving the advertisers a useful filter. And since the gullible types are where they get their money from they optimise for that. Tech folk are just unwanted noise in their statistics.
- iamphilrae 9y agoYou’re still providing excellent usability test data. You’ve proved that their client’s blatant user-unfriendliness advertising strategy doesn’t work on you. Unfortunately 90% of their other test subjects probably clicked the advert so they went with it anyway.