I'm not sure "We couldn't open your camera" is any better than "Camera error". How does a normal person "open" a camera? It's just as stuck in technical abstractions.
And "Oops something went wrong! Try again later!" is more cutesy but gives nothing substantial above "Request failed. Retry.". I would hope that a UX designer doing their job properly would think about the user, how they interact with the message, and come to the conclusion that "later" is uselessly vague. "Try again now" or "try again tomorrow" are useful and actionable.
There seems to be a lot more appreciation that UX is important and a proportional increase in UX fluff. Not much of it seems to be very thoughtful.
I think there's a parallel in UI design. There's decades of HCI research, but redesigns seem to be more concentrating on making things look pretty, not easier to use.
You are right that both examples don‘t really contain actionable advise, but there is a huge difference between the two.
The way your app „speaks“ to the user influences how people perceive it; and it may make the difference between a user deleting the app in anger, or contacting customer support to ask for help.
We‘re all human beings, and we react to the tone of the message.
To hell with actionability, affability, etc. I would much rather know that "Request failed. Error code 0xa34cc9." than "Oops, that's embarrassing! Tacocat is all out of tacos. Please try again later."
Which is completely valid feedback, assmuming the target user is also a tech savvy Person such as yourself.
The average consumer on a non-tech related site tends to give up pretty quickly when they see arcane error messages. “Oh I’m not technical enough to use that product”.
This is a criticism of one spicific issue, but I would argue that there shouldn’t be any variation of “try again” messages. If the probably can potentially be resolved with just trying again, shouldn’t the software just do that automatically instead of telling the user to manually retry?
As a user I find those messages verify frustrating because it feels like the software potentially knows what the problem was, what a possible solution is, but makes me do it. (Also simply retrying usually doesn’t solve the issue).
The examples are maybe lacking information but "camera error" and "request failed" are robotic and cold sounding so they're an improvement on that front.
IMO the goal of good UX is to help users to fulfil the purpose of the product in as pain free way as possible. Clear to understand labels are definitely _a_ goal, but leading the user down a path towards completing _their_ goal should be _your_ ultimate goal. If that's highlighting a CTA button, so be it.
I didn't get that impression from the article at all. It seemed like the main point was having human friendly texts to smooth the interaction and translate the experience well.
I always find these kinds of articles, as this one, to have too little examples of the message they are trying to convey. It makes it feel as if the writer came up with the subject first and when they tried to find examples to back up their idea they couldn't find any. Maybe writers should then forget about their article or bench it for later, so that they can gather examples over a longer period of time. It just makes your message so much more compelling when you can show the reader what you mean than asking them to take your word on it.
Probably because "software ux design" is a new field and there are no standards for academic discourse, anyone can just start typing and write an article which gets accolades.
> Oops! Something went wrong! Could you please try again later?
I like the gist of the article but this particular message has everything wrong.
- Oops! - please don’t, it makes you look like you do not know what you are doing
- Something went wrong! - what exactly? Is this because of me or you? I’d like to at least see if there is something I can do or not. For example whether I do not have internet access or your server is down
If you provide an error message, without providing some way of getting the actual details of the error that occurred easily, then that is almost a hanging offense.
Saying "Oops, an error occurred, try again later" is essentially useless. Especially after you've seen it more than a few times. Moreover, this kind of thing I have seen first-hand leads to some bizarre magical thinking on the part of users, on the order of "If I slaughter a rooster, and sprinkle the blood around, and a white goose flies overhead, the problem gets resolved." It's staggering seeing some of the "workarounds" that customers will invent if there isn't real error information present.
> ...Because writers are good at grammar and punctuation...
Struggling for relevance and failing. If that's all they can offer, they offer no value. No, it's not because I have a blind spot as a developer, but because I know my users.
That is not to say that the technical / UI writers are redundant. It's just the level of most is ridiculously low. It's like with web design: lots of providers, but only a handful of those that know what they are doing.
Heck, I'd be happy to outsource many of my content writing chores but I am yet to find a combination of functional brain, ability to analyse the tech, and sensible rates!
I know a multinational where the technical documentation department was busy copying the documentation from an internal portal (Confluence) to an external customer-facing portal. They would ask the developers to write the documentation and what parts should be copied. Amazingly, they often couldn't do even that properly. They had nice-sounding titles like "manager", "director", "analyst", etc. To the company's merit, the idiocy was eventually discontinued, but it took years.
Hmmm. I don't think this article get what UX copywriting means... It's not about sounding personal or cool, but rather revealing the clear purpose of a function... There's no real UX advantage by replacing "Contact Us" with "Let's Talk"... Perhaps it increases your conversions or clicks, but it's not giving the user any added extra benefit or increased clarity.
I think the point made is solid but I absolutely despise cutesy lingo in utilitarian applications. "Oops! Leggo my Eggo?!" Please don't turn your app into oops and boops unless it is a game or nonserious work.
Well, what did you expect from a self-publishing, self-advertising Medium article? If anything, they've chosen their brand name quite appropriately I would say (inapptics). And you also have to understand that people employed in this position have to go through all kinds of acrobatic stunts in order to justify their salaries worth.
And also the submission title "Quit everything and start writing" is different to the actual article title, but it looks like a newbie submitter who is still learning the HN guidelines.
That said, the article makes a valid point about consistency of tone of voice through an application, and that the tone and style of writing through a product forms part of the user's experience.
And "Oops something went wrong! Try again later!" is more cutesy but gives nothing substantial above "Request failed. Retry.". I would hope that a UX designer doing their job properly would think about the user, how they interact with the message, and come to the conclusion that "later" is uselessly vague. "Try again now" or "try again tomorrow" are useful and actionable.
There seems to be a lot more appreciation that UX is important and a proportional increase in UX fluff. Not much of it seems to be very thoughtful.
I think there's a parallel in UI design. There's decades of HCI research, but redesigns seem to be more concentrating on making things look pretty, not easier to use.