Signs it is time to revisit error messages

The advice here is unglamorous, which is probably why it gets skipped. A few signals that error messages is due some attention.

Design decisions are the ones clients feel most confident arguing about, which makes it worth separating taste from evidence early. Budget a little time for it every quarter and it never becomes a project of its own.

The signals

• Nobody can say when it was last reviewed
• The answer depends on who you ask
• Say what went wrong and what to do about it
• Never blame the person reading the message

How to approach it

Put the error next to the field that caused it. That sounds obvious written down. It is still the thing most often skipped. It is worth deciding this deliberately rather than inheriting whatever the last person set up.

In practice

The measurable part of design is whether people can find what they came for and act on it without hesitating. Three things worth confirming about error messages before you move on:

• Someone can say what the current setup is without going to look
• Say what went wrong and what to do about it — and you know whether that is true here
• There is a way to tell whether the last change to this helped

Pick the one that would hurt most if it failed, and start there.