3 ms·
> “It said a bunch of gobbledygook that ended with dhcp timeout” I've done a little end-user support, and this is a pretty optimistic take on what you'd get.
by recursive 6y ago
> “It said a bunch of gobbledygook that ended with dhcp timeout”
I've done a little end-user support, and this is a pretty optimistic take on what you'd get. It would probably be more like "It didn't work." in both cases. Maybe you'd get "there was an error message"
Q: What do you see on your screen? A: Nothing
Q: Try again and tell me what happens. A: It didn't work and I still don't see anything.
Many people have an automatic reactions to any kind of error or message. They get dismissed automatically. It seems that some people don't even realize they're doing it.
- cratermoon 6y agoThe reason this happens is because users reason that if the program worked but had a problem, it would not show "an error". They see so many errors they can't do anything about, they just dismiss them and look at the non-erroring program for guidance. Users then see an "error" that pops up as being an error that's getting in the way of seeing the problem. A good program doesn't say "that was an error", because users are now habituated to assuming the error is nothing they can do about, and ignore it. A good program just gives feedback as if it were performing normally. A good program simply says, implicitly because it's not framed as a problem, "You wanted to do X and expected a Y but got a Z because.."