Itqualityassurance
- What should you avoid doing to prevent user errors?
- What is a good error message?
- Why are error messages important?
- What is error prevention?
What should you avoid doing to prevent user errors?
Prevent mistakes by helping the user to build a good mental model of your interface. Use design patterns that communicate how they work to users, encourage users to double-check their work (especially before deleting), and warn before mistakes are made.
What is a good error message?
Good error message should include: Explicit indication that something has gone wrong. The very worst error messages are those that don't exist. When users make mistakes and get no feedback, they're completely lost.
Why are error messages important?
Error messages are used when user intervention is required, to indicate that a desired operation has failed, or to relay important warnings (such as warning a computer user that they are almost out of hard disk space).
What is error prevention?
Essentially, it involves alerting a user when they're making an error, with the intention to make it easy for them to do whatever it is they are doing without making a mistake. The main reason this principle of error prevention is important is that we humans are prone to- and will always make mistakes.
