4 ms·

Honestly, no. An error message shouldn't apologize. A good error message has the following conditions: * Concise. ("You need to enter a number in this field, n

Honestly, no. An error message shouldn't apologize. A good error message has the following conditions: * Concise. ("You need to enter a number in this field, not text" = Good, "we're very sorry but we can't understand it if you write your age in text" = Bad). * Clearly telling the user what went wrong without relying on technical jargon. The line number where something went wrong doesn't need to be in an error message; it's not something the user can do much with - keep that in the crash dump. The DLL name you're missing probably should be if it's from a runtime. * Providing a means on where to find a more detailed error message/who to call to fix it if the user can't fix it themselves, with the right information to supply that person. ("Please call your administrator for help and use code ERR_CRAPSHOOT (128)" is good, "We're very sorry" with a ton of warranty warnings and a way too vague error code that can indicate a ton of similar errors is bad.) * Avoid the notion of just reporting everything to some backend endpoint and giving the users no indications of what went wrong; this is only frustrating to the user, no matter how many apologies you put in the message. It's an answer that amounts to "your message is very important to us, please hold the line".

Stratoscope 3y ago
> "You need to enter a number in this field, not text" = Good No. Never tell me what I "need to" do. There are any number of ways to get this message across without telling me what I need to do. One example off the top of my head, probably not the best, but certainly an improvement because it doesn't blame me: > This field only accepts numbers For bonus points, put that message next to the field modelessly at the moment I type a non-numeric character.
- Angostura 3y ago
  For even more bonus points, avoid talking about large grassy areas. Many users will have no clue what a field is.
- PinkSheep 3y ago
  > Never tell me what I "need to" do. Do you imply ill intent upon the program? Because I read this as a violation of tone. I interact with the program because I want/need to. It's in my interest to follow through the *instructions* to interact with it correctly and efficiently. I can follow instructions and view it as a helpful hint. How about entering, say, a printer configuration. These fields accept only SSIDs, IP addresses etc?
trealira 3y ago
> "You need to enter a number in this field, not text." Error messages this general become slightly annoying when the app doesn't respond intelligently to all possible scenarios that its wording might imply. For example, if the field only parsed numeric digits, and failed on inputs like "12.5" or "3e1" because they contained the characters "e" or ".", then they should have written something like "Only numeric characters are accepted," or "The number must consist only of digits (0-9)," since it rejected valid numbers. The app is saying I need to enter a number, but I did enter a number, and it's just too primitive to recognize it.

Stratoscope 3y ago

> "You need to enter a number in this field, not text" = Good No. Never tell me what I "need to" do. There are any number of ways to get this message across without telling me what I need to do. One example off the top of my head, probably not the best, but certainly an improvement because it doesn't blame me: > This field only accepts numbers For bonus points, put that message next to the field modelessly at the moment I type a non-numeric character.

Angostura 3y ago
For even more bonus points, avoid talking about large grassy areas. Many users will have no clue what a field is.
PinkSheep 3y ago
> Never tell me what I "need to" do. Do you imply ill intent upon the program? Because I read this as a violation of tone. I interact with the program because I want/need to. It's in my interest to follow through the *instructions* to interact with it correctly and efficiently. I can follow instructions and view it as a helpful hint. How about entering, say, a printer configuration. These fields accept only SSIDs, IP addresses etc?

trealira 3y ago

> "You need to enter a number in this field, not text." Error messages this general become slightly annoying when the app doesn't respond intelligently to all possible scenarios that its wording might imply. For example, if the field only parsed numeric digits, and failed on inputs like "12.5" or "3e1" because they contained the characters "e" or ".", then they should have written something like "Only numeric characters are accepted," or "The number must consist only of digits (0-9)," since it rejected valid numbers. The app is saying I need to enter a number, but I did enter a number, and it's just too primitive to recognize it.