Making Clear Error Messages

Posted on February 15, 2008 by Alexis Brion

Explaining errors is one of the basic concepts in usability for the web. It is as simple and obvious as telling the user what was wrong and how to solve that problem.

"It is important that error messages are clear…"

There are many ways of explaining errors, like going back to the web form marking the erroneous fields. It is important that error messages are clear, avoid things like "error 4055".

Digg, the social bookmarking website, displays from time to time an error message at the end of the submission procedure. I don’t really know why this happens because the error message is not clear, no solution is proposed and there is no entry about that on the FAQ section. The user experience could not be worse in this situation.

See previous entries about this topic.

Usability In Emails, The Sender Name

Posted on February 14, 2008 by Alexis Brion

Websites need to notify something to its users and send emails like crazy. But most of those emails will be ignored if you don’t think in the details.

"Try also to sort those emails through the very same sender name…"

Sender name should be clear, so users could see when an email is important. I have gotten emails coming from "mail robot", for example. That confuse users and your email will be directly going to the trash.

Try also to sort those emails through the very same sender name. Thinking in these details will improve usability and users will notice it. Check this examples:

Sender: Mail Robot (this company does not care about users)

Sender: Sheraton Hotels (not bad)

Sender: Sheraton Miami (better)

Sender: Sheraton Miami Reservation (Excellent)

Sender: Sheraton Hotels Newsletters (Excellent)

In the last two examples users are able to identify the important emails coming from a website. This technique will prevent, for example, users deleting reservation confirmation emails.

Providing A Privacy Options Page, Facebook Design

Posted on February 13, 2008 by Alexis Brion

Giving users an easy way to see and change their privacy policy gives them a better sense of security and at the end they might finish up giving you more information if you take the time to design a good privacy page. Keep in mind that some users don’t want to share any kind of information with websites but, fortunately, thats not the typical user profile.

"give them the chance to control all that data all the time…"

Most users will accept to give you some information, specially if you give them the chance to control all that data all the time. That’s why it’s important to give users an easy access to the privacy settings, make that link highly visible, like Facebook does.

Facebook has also a good privacy settings page design. They grouped the settings in different categories. Once inside the category the user has great amount of options. My first impression was that this was too much, but if the website gives the option to deactivate single features there are more possibilities for the others to remain active.

Advanced options…

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Monthly Archives: February 2008