Does a program need to respond straight to the point or politely? [migrated]

Posted by Fabian Bigler on Programmers See other posts from Programmers or by Fabian Bigler
Published on 2014-06-05T10:17:43Z Indexed on 2014/06/05 15:37 UTC
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user-experience

|

usability

I wonder if it's better if the program responds straight to the point or politely.

Consider the following example: The user clicks a button to print something based on a template. However, the template does not exist.

Which feedback would you prefer:

The template is not defined yet. Please make sure to set the template before you print it out.
Make sure to configure the template before printing.

The first statement is more polite. The user feels treated well.

The second statement is more straight forward and faster understood.

What is generally better?

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