Unit 9: People Make Mistakes

100 Things Every Designer Needs to Know About People (Voices That Matter) by Susan Weinschenk, Ph.D.

Chapter 9: People Make Mistakes

This chapter is exactly what you think it would be about. It is impossible to make a completely fail-safe product.

When confronting a user with an error message, here are things to keep in mind: Tell the user what they did, explain the problem, and instruct the user to correct it. Of course, write like a normal human being and give examples to follow.

The Yerkes-Dodson law refers to the arousal created by slight stress. This law states that said stress can help improve productivity and can help you perform a task. However, this is only true to a point. Eventually, too much stress reduces productivity and can be damaging to a creative or a users experience. This section offers the idea to design with stress in mind. Understand that your designs may be experienced in a stressful environment.

Errors:

Commission Errors: Taking additional/unnecessary steps.

Omission Errors: Insufficient steps to complete.

Wrong-Action Errors: Inputting the wrong information at the right time.

Motor-Control Errors: Errors while controlling a device.

Corrections:

Systematic Explorations: Planning out what to do to correct an error.

Trial and Error Explorations: Randomly trying different actions.

Rigid Explorations: Repeating an action that doesn't work.

Web UI mistakes to avoid when designing cross-platform:
http://www.infoworld.com/article/2623892/web-development/7-web-ui-mistakes-to-avoid-for-smartphones-and-tablets.html

Interesting game design mistakes that indie developers should avoid:
http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/181864/The_9_common_mistakes_every_indie_game_studio_should_avoid.php

Autistic kids learning from mistakes while playing video games:
http://learningworksforkids.com/2014/09/8-reasons-children-with-autism-should-play-video-games/