How Do You Get Users To Read Error Messages?

A BOFH writes "The longer I do desktop support, the more it becomes obvious that my users don't read anything that appears on their screen. Instead, they memorize a series of buttons to press to get whatever result they want and if anything unexpected happens, they're completely lost. Error logs help a lot, but they have their limits. I've been toying with a few ideas, but I don't know if any of them will work and I was hoping my fellow Slashdotters could point me in the right direction. For example, I was thinking about creating icons or logos to identify specific errors. They might not remember that an error is about 'uninitialized data' but they might be more able to remember that they got the 'puppy error' if I showed a puppy picture next to the error message. Or for times when finding images is too time consuming, you could create simple logos from letters, numbers, symbols, colors, or shapes, so you could have the 'red 5' error or 'blue square' error (or any combination of those elements). I've even wondered if it would be possible to expand that to cover the other senses, for example, playing a unique sound with the error. Unfortunately, haptic and olfactory feedback aren't readily available. I like to think that my users would remember the error that caused them to get a swift kick in the balls. And if they forgot it anyhow, I could always help them reproduce it. Does anyone else have experience with ideas like these? Did it work?"

Comments

Re:Fixed Penalty

[BitZtream]

In my IT department we had a word for people like you.

Dickheads who deserve to be fired for doing exactly the opposite of what their job is.

Your job ... is to make the software work so they can use it. Your job, is to translate what users tell you into something useful. Your job, is to help the users get their jobs done.

The INSTANT you start doing ANYTHING to make them LESS efficient, even short term, your ass would be fired so fast you wouldn't realize it happened.

You don't deserve to have the job since you clearly aren't willing to do it.