This is just a short post acknowledging good design. One of the most overlooked elements of design are error messages. Acknowledging problems just isn’t a very interesting part of software design. Consequently, messages tend to be cryptic and more annoying than the actual problem.
I just received the following error message in CoTweet. It says that there is a stability issue with twitter and they will notify me when service is restored. That is simple, well worded, helpful and includes reassurance that they’ll be watching out for me so I don’t have to keep checking.
Simply wonderful.
This has me wonder whether they also report scheduled instability, and how do they tell [;<).
Posted by: orcmid | 14 July 2009 at 19:41
This has me wonder whether they also report scheduled instability, and how do they tell [;<).
Posted by: orcmid | 14 July 2009 at 20:18
Gak! I had a system incoherence experience while posting my comment. First, it spun on the watchamacallit forever (the thing to defeat robot commenting) so I took a walk and then forgot about it until closing some windows on my desktop.
Then I had an error message and I was being shown a preview of my comment and a big hairy error message. (It is also 16:41 where I am and not 19:41 as it says.) So I fixed the [;<) thinking it was the "<", using "<" instead. I was given the captcha (oh, that whatchamacallit) again so I entered the new challenge-value and the comment went through perfectly at 20:18 (your clock, not mine).
There was no error the second time, but now I see that my comment has been posted twice, and there was apparently no problem with the "<" in my little [;<) winky.
Based on this, I have no idea what actually happened. I wonder what will happen this time. Ah yes, confirmable-experience example, perhaps?
Posted by: orcmid | 14 July 2009 at 20:27