How to get users to read error messages?

Question

If you program for a nontechnical audience, you find yourself at a high risk that users will not read your carefully worded and enlightening error messages, but just click on the first button available with a shrug of frustration.

So, I'm wondering what good practices you can recommend to help users actually read your error message, instead of simply waiving it aside. Ideas I can think of would fall along the lines of:

• Formatting of course help; maybe a simple, short message, with a "learn more" button that leads to the longer, more detailed error message
• Have all error messages link to some section of the user guide (somewhat difficult to achieve)
• Just don't issue error messages, simply refuse to perform the task (a somewhat "Apple" way of handling user input)

Edit: the audience I have in mind is a rather broad user base that doesn't use the software too often and is not captive (i.e., no in-house software or narrow community). A more generic form of this question was asked on slashdot, so you may want to check there for some of the answers.

Answer 1

The best UI design will be where you virtually never show an error message. The software should adapt to the user. With that sort of a design, an error message will be novel and will grab the users attention. If you pepper the user with senseless dialogs like that you're explicitly training them to ignore your messages.

Answer 2

See also Slashdot's user responses here.

Answer 3

Alerts/popups are annoying, that's why everyone hits the first button they see.

Make it less annoying. Example: if the user entered the date incorrectly, or entered a text where numbers are expected, then DON'T popup a message, just highlight the field and write a message somewhere around it.

Make a custom message box. Do not ever use the default message box of the system, for example Windows XP message boxes are annoying themselves. Make a new colored message box, with a different background color than system default.

Very Important: do not insist. Some message boxes use the Modal dialog and insist on making you read it, this is very annoying. If you can make the message box appear as a warning message it would be better, for example, Stack Overflow messages that appear right on the top of the page, informing but not annoying.

UPDATE
Make the message meaningful and helpful. For example, do not write something like, "No Keyboard found, press F1 to continue."

Answer 4

I'd suggest that you give feedback (stating that the user made a mistake) immediately after the mistake is made. (For instance, when entering a value of a date field, check the value and, if it is wrong, make the input field visually different).

If there are errors on the page (I'm more into web development, hence I'm referring to it as a "page", but it can be also called "form"), show an "error summary", explaining that there were errors and a bulleted list of what exactly errors happened. However, if there are more than 5-6 words per message, those won't be read/understood.

Answer 5

Unless you can provide the user some simple work-around, don't bother showing the user an error message at all. There is just no point, since 90% of users won't care what it says.

On the other hand If you CAN actually show the user a useful workaround, then one way to force them to read it is make the OK button become enabled after 10 seconds or so. Sort of how Firefox does it whenever you are trying to install a new plug-in.

If it is a total crash that you cannot gracefully recover from, then inform the user in very layman terms saying:

"I'm sorry we screwed up, we would like to send some information about this crash, will you allow us to do so? YES / NO"

In addition, try not to make your error messages longer than a sentence. When people (me included) see a whole paragraph talking about the error, my mind just shuts off.

With so much social media and information overload, people's mind freeze when they see a wall of text.

EDIT:

Someone once also recently suggested using comic strips along with whatever message you want to show. Such as something from Dilbert that may be close to the type of error you may have.

Answer 6

I often display the error in red (when the design allows it).

Red stands for "alert", etc. so it's more often read.