To message or Not to message 4-6 June 2014 http://www.uxsofia.com/en @dsimov

Our goal today Talk about messages Good, bad or necessary evil No recipe – be practical

I do not like to write messages

WHAT’S IN A MESSAGE?

Sign warning prohibitory mandatory priority indication source of UI icons: http://www.iconarchive.com/show/soft-scraps-icons-by-hopstarter.html

Text 0. Who shows the message 1. What happened (or did not happen) 2. Why it happened 3. What users can do about it often usually sometimes rarely

Closing Traditionally a button

WHAT ARE MESSAGES?

Install Twitter app on my mobile I do not want them to upload the contacts from the address book on my phone, so I cleared the checkbox Then on Sign In…

…from Twitter … I get this Now they speak of friends no idea what they mean!?!

And I do not know any of the 48 people they want me to follow

Warning I get this every time I start Windows fix: Do not show OR: Show more info so users know why this is important and what to do

Critical I get this every time I start Windows as well fix: Show option to remove from start-up list OR: Allow re-installing

Validation Is it that hard to ignore the spaces?

fix: Parse the input and ignore spaces, dashes, dots…

Confirmation Translation: Your electronic signature is valid and you can make money transfers online fix: Hide the gibberish. Show a normal message.

Informative fix: State that the downtime will be at night and last only 1 hour and use my timezone

As you type fix: Accept Cyrillic OR: Add to the message that only Latin characters are OK

Guess what On Yes, the program starts On No, the program does not start fix: Do not show OR: Ask users to select a library location

Numbered Glad I did not encounter the previous three fix: Say what happened, why, and what users need/can do

Another time Access is blocked! Reason: #34!

Please call the Eurobank officer who serves you.

fix: Fix the site to work 24/7 OR: Tell users to log in only in business hours

Another place fix: ?!?!

OR: Link to a travel site so users can book a ticket to USA

Make me think a lot what!?

fix: Simplify and state the acceptable range

Make me stop thinking Now I’m lost fix: No idea

Series of increasing severity Unusual error… not enough storage Unusual error… no scroll bars Unusual error… catastrophic failure fix: Fix the code

Schizophrenic Not available… Not accessible… or Access denied?

fix: See the next slide

Why not this instead You may have no permissions to view the content of the folder, or it may be located on a computer with which you do not have a connection. Check your connection and try again or contact your administrator for permissions.

Useless fix: Show the list of external references

Unnecessary fix: Do not show

In progress fix: No fix needed

In progress fix: Use a normal progress indicator - see how the others do it

Predictive fix: No fix needed

Preventive fix: No fix needed OR: Avoid the popup – see the next slide

2014: jetBlue eliminated the popup

…the message now obscures the input fix: Make the message non-modal OR: Make the user input visible

CAPS LOCK IS ON

CAPS LOCK We sometimes need to type in all caps Caps Lock is a mode, we often do not notice it is ON The Caps Lock key is too easy to hit, next to Shift When we type passwords, we don’t see what we type fix: I leave it to you to design one or two

DO AND DON’T

Try to avoid messages especially modal ones Reconsider the limitations: why limit the password to 12 characters Parse the user input: 12 May 2014 is the same as 14/05/12 Change the UI: a calendar picker might work well

Try to avoid messages - 2 Save the technical details: most users do not care how the program works example: Search results found but will not be shown in the current mode. Users are to do the search again on another screen.

Use modal messages as a last resort Show a modal message only if you:  have no idea what else to do  have no time to do a better thing  feel it makes business sense  know it will never show up to users

Jimmy’s axiom on messages Any internal message that is not supposed to be seen by users finds a way to float to the surface and shows up to users

Keep messages short, yet complete We want to do work (have fun, find information) not read messages Yet we do not want to guess what is going on

Frame messages positively You have only view permissions is better than You do not have edit permissions

Think twice before you try fun and before you write “oops“

Ask for help Have a reviewer Better a colleague to find your splling mistakes Work with a writer These people are trained to write words and sentences Test with users

Take home 1. Try to avoid messages  don’t write messages, design interactions 2. If you have to give a message, make sure it says:  what happened  why  what users can do about it 3. Be practical

BONUS

The best message

FISHING PERMITTED

CARP

1 KG – 3 LV

source: http://tangra.si.umich.edu/~radev/public/onlybg2/Only_In_Bulgaria_08.jpg

The best message - ever Non-ambiguous Language familiar to target users No excessive info; just the necessary Substantial information - price Gives direction Large font – can be read from a moving car Unobtrusive

YOU ARE WELCOME