Designed for Use, 2nd Edition

Don’t Blame Your Users in Your Error Messages

We’ve all encountered an error message like this:

The first thing people will read is, “You have typed the address incorrectly.” This error message blames the user for trying to access a URL that doesn’t lead to a page. But the user very likely didn’t do anything wrong. When people encounter “page can’t be found” errors, it’s more likely that they simply clicked a broken link, probably a broken link on the very website where the address leads to.

Instead of blaming the user, we should start by apologizing for the problem. This is good usability, because it helps people calm down and deal with the issue. ...