How to get users to read error messages?
- by FX
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., not an 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.
