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I'm not sure "We couldn't open your camera" is any better than "Camera error". How does a normal person "open" a camera? It's just as stuck in technical abstrac

I'm not sure "We couldn't open your camera" is any better than "Camera error". How does a normal person "open" a camera? It's just as stuck in technical abstractions. And "Oops something went wrong! Try again later!" is more cutesy but gives nothing substantial above "Request failed. Retry.". I would hope that a UX designer doing their job properly would think about the user, how they interact with the message, and come to the conclusion that "later" is uselessly vague. "Try again now" or "try again tomorrow" are useful and actionable. There seems to be a lot more appreciation that UX is important and a proportional increase in UX fluff. Not much of it seems to be very thoughtful. I think there's a parallel in UI design. There's decades of HCI research, but redesigns seem to be more concentrating on making things look pretty, not easier to use.

nerdponx 9y ago
To hell with actionability, affability, etc. I would much rather know that "Request failed. Error code 0xa34cc9." than "Oops, that's embarrassing! Tacocat is all out of tacos. Please try again later."
- kitotik 9y ago
  Which is completely valid feedback, assmuming the target user is also a tech savvy Person such as yourself. The average consumer on a non-tech related site tends to give up pretty quickly when they see arcane error messages. “Oh I’m not technical enough to use that product”.
jakobegger 9y ago
You are right that both examples don‘t really contain actionable advise, but there is a huge difference between the two. The way your app „speaks“ to the user influences how people perceive it; and it may make the difference between a user deleting the app in anger, or contacting customer support to ask for help. We‘re all human beings, and we react to the tone of the message.
seanwilson 9y ago
The examples are maybe lacking information but "camera error" and "request failed" are robotic and cold sounding so they're an improvement on that front.
- afandian 9y ago
  Damning with feint praise.
Pulcinella 9y ago
This is a criticism of one spicific issue, but I would argue that there shouldn’t be any variation of “try again” messages. If the probably can potentially be resolved with just trying again, shouldn’t the software just do that automatically instead of telling the user to manually retry? As a user I find those messages verify frustrating because it feels like the software potentially knows what the problem was, what a possible solution is, but makes me do it. (Also simply retrying usually doesn’t solve the issue).

nerdponx 9y ago

To hell with actionability, affability, etc. I would much rather know that "Request failed. Error code 0xa34cc9." than "Oops, that's embarrassing! Tacocat is all out of tacos. Please try again later."

kitotik 9y ago
Which is completely valid feedback, assmuming the target user is also a tech savvy Person such as yourself. The average consumer on a non-tech related site tends to give up pretty quickly when they see arcane error messages. “Oh I’m not technical enough to use that product”.

jakobegger 9y ago

You are right that both examples don‘t really contain actionable advise, but there is a huge difference between the two. The way your app „speaks“ to the user influences how people perceive it; and it may make the difference between a user deleting the app in anger, or contacting customer support to ask for help. We‘re all human beings, and we react to the tone of the message.

seanwilson 9y ago

The examples are maybe lacking information but "camera error" and "request failed" are robotic and cold sounding so they're an improvement on that front.

afandian 9y ago
Damning with feint praise.

Pulcinella 9y ago

This is a criticism of one spicific issue, but I would argue that there shouldn’t be any variation of “try again” messages. If the probably can potentially be resolved with just trying again, shouldn’t the software just do that automatically instead of telling the user to manually retry? As a user I find those messages verify frustrating because it feels like the software potentially knows what the problem was, what a possible solution is, but makes me do it. (Also simply retrying usually doesn’t solve the issue).