News for hackers. Stuff that matters.

A comment on Disrespectful Design – Users aren’t stupid or lazy. Parent comment

Re:Disrespectful Design – Users aren’t stupid or lazy by II2II on Sunday September 13, 2020 @05:40PM (#24464163)
It is easy for those who are comfortable with computers to read an error message then determine whether we can solve the problem on our own or request support.

For people who are not comfortable with computers, they just see an error message and expect it to be something that they cannot handle.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Disrespectful Design – Users aren’t stupid or lazy by Aeolun on Sunday September 13, 2020 @07:55PM (#24465002)
Which is dumb. 80% of error messages are likely something they are perfectly equiped to handle.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Disrespectful Design – Users aren’t stupid or lazy by II2II on Monday September 14, 2020 @10:14AM (#24470388)
Perhaps, but it is that 20% of error messages that leave people believing that they are unable to handle the other 80%.

Part of the problem is how error messages are presented. A lot of software uses tools like modal dialog boxes to present everything from "a file with that name already exists" to "the file cannot be written". The former can easily be handled. The latter may involve a call to technical support (and part of the reason for that is the ambiguity of the error message).

[ Parent | on HN ]