Usability Heuristic 9: Help Users Recognize, Diagnose, and Recover from Errors
Summary: No. 9 of the top 10 UX design heuristics is to write error messages that help users understand the problem and to provide information that constructively teaches users how to recover from the error.
Established wisdom holds that good error messages are polite, precise, and constructive. The Web brings a few new guidelines: Make error messages clearly visible, reduce the work required to fix the problem, and educate users along the way.
Video Author
Kate Moran is a Senior User Experience Specialist with Nielsen Norman Group. She conducts research and leads training seminars to help digital product teams expand and improve their UX practice. Her research findings and recommendations are informed by her background in information theory and design, as well as her development experience.
