(no subject)

[jahbulon.livejournal.com]

"Yeah I'm setting up my mozilla thunderbird and I need some settings."
"Ok."
"Yeah I'm up to a screen where it has this field for email address. What do I type in there?"
"Well what is your email address?"
"user@isp.com.au"
"Well, type that in there."
"Ooooh." [types]

Comments

[jahbulon.livejournal.com]

That's Microsoft's little bitch of a fault : making innocuous data sound frightening.

[jahbulon.livejournal.com]

That can be directly related to the design of the separate warnings including font size and placement. Most important is the wording on the button itself.

Customers look at buttons as the solution to the problem. The problem is the very fact that they have to make a choice between two buttons. If they can click OK, everything is OK. If they click Cancel, the message goes away - which means everything is OK. The act of reading the error message is not suggested or obviated by either choice the customer has to make.

Continue anyway.. Continue even though we just told you why you shouldn't. This phrase directly refers to the fact that information was provided thus the customer stops before being forced to make a conscious decision.