People will always make mistakes, there is no fail-safe product, so always assume that something will go wrong. weather it is mistakes while working with computers, software that is released with to many mistakes, or just a designer that made an application that is unusable because they didn't understand what the user needed it happens and there is nothing we can do about it but to learn from them.
it is hard to make a system where everything works smoothly without errors, because even if there is non you have to take into account that there may still be errors on the operating side. The only way to ensure errors is to test frequently and test often, and that can become pricey.
the best error message is no message. Of course no one wants an error message, but they are important to have on devices so if something does go wrong the people will be able to know what to do about it.
How to write an error message. Like mentioned above everyone makes mistakes so assume that a mistake will happen and you will have to inform the user with a warning sign.
the book says the best way to make a warning sign is to first:
-Tell the person what he or she did.
-Explain the problem.
-Instruct the person on how to correct it.
- Make sure it is written in plain language using active not passive voice.
-Show plenty of examples.
The most common errors happen when people are under stress. Trying to meet deadlines are the most common ones. When using a website under stress people will make more errors, an example the book gave was dad was with a child out of the country and she was sick he needed to go to a website to find out where he could take her that would also take their insurance. At that exact moment he was having a hard time understanding the website but that was because of his wailing daughter in the background. When the father returned to the site a day later after the stress had subsided he was able to navigate the site quite easily. A little stress is good because it heightens awareness but the amount we were talking about above can actually degrade performance.
We need some type of arousal such as stress, or having something seem a little difficult to keep our attention. If humans perform a boring task the level of of arousal much be raised you can do this by incorporating sound, colors, or movement. If the task is more difficult however you don't want to have to much arousal or the task can get to complicated, you can do this by eliminating distracting elements like color, sounds, and movement unless it directly relates to the task being done. Another way to eliminate too much stress is to do research on it, find out which situations might be stressful, observe and interview the clients that could be using there products determine the level of stress and redesign if the stress level is too high. We need to test for mistakes because they are going to happen, and not all mistakes are bad mistakes lead to better ideas and better solutions for a stronger product. Since we know there will be errors we test for them and document wether the error consequences are positive, negative, or neutral and redesign after concentrating on errors with negative consequences first.
Although we can't control errors from happening there are some patterns that have formed that we can keep in mind to avoid them. People make predictable types of errors in the performance categories, the first ones are commission errors, which is when you take additional steps that are unnecessary, Omission errors which are when you skip steps, then you have the wrong-action errors which are when you take an action at the appropriate point in the procedure, but it was the wrong action.
People use different error strategies to correct errors. some use systematic explorations where in user testing they collect data on the way the audience uses strategies to get through a particular task, which is helpful in predicting future failures and in the strategy of the redesigned product. Then you have trial and error strategies, where the person randomly tries out different actions, menus, icons, and controls. The last strategy that the book talks about is rigid exploratins which is when you do the action over and over again even though it doesn't solve the error because they think the product is just not registering properly. The overall chapter just talks about that we can't stop mistakes from happening we can do things to make them happen less frequently but that we need to expect that they will sometimes happen in our designs and we need to design with that in mind.
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