Designing Clear Error Messaging

Designing Clear Error Messaging

Reducing Frustration with Actionable Guidance

Reducing Frustration with Actionable Guidance

March 2024

Overview

One in five Californians may be eligible to change past convictions under Prop 47, providing an opportunity to enhance rehabilitation and reintegration into society. However, the complexity of legal processes, unfamiliar terminology, and varying procedural requirements often complicate efforts to seek resolution for those with criminal records.


Our product Expunge Assist is focused on providing a resource tool that guides individuals through the declaration letter step towards expungement.


Expunge Assist assembled a content team tasked and brought me on to help with refreshing content and establishing a comprehensive guideline. My goal is to maintain a topic-appropriate voice and tone that incorporates trauma-informed language best practices.

Role

UX Writer

Team

UX Designer: Ellynna Ruan

Timeline

2 weeks

Problem: User Flow Interruptions

During UI testing, our team discovered several interruptions in the user flow, requiring effective messaging to inform site visitors of encountered failures and redirect them to an alternative section of the website.

These error pages provided the opportunity to utilize our newly established voice and tone guidelines, while also prioritizing trauma-informed language practices that would enhance user engagement.

The initial scope of the project included a "404", and an "Oops" page.

Tools

Notion, Google Drive, Figma, Github, Slack

The Challenge

Incorporate the Following Voice, Tone, and Goal into Error Messages

Our Voice and Tone

• Empowering

• Inclusive

• Empathetic

• Educational

• Encouraging

• Guiding

Our Goal

Use conscious trauma informed language with as few words as possible to reduce the cognitive load and provide support to people seeking expungement.

The Challenge

Incorporate the Following Voice, Tone, and Goal into Error Messages

Our Voice and Tone

• Empowering

• Inclusive

• Empathetic

• Educational

• Encouraging

• Guiding

Our Goal

Use conscious trauma informed language with as few words as possible to reduce the cognitive load and provide support to people seeking expungement.

Before:

Yup. That's right an empty screen.

Error messaging is crucial in communicating what happened, technical limitations, and trouble shooting.


It's best practice to convey what and why something happened, provide reassurance and a way to fix it,

Straight to the Point

404 Error Page

Softening the tone for "The page you are looking for no longer exists" to trauma informed focused language and informs the user of what caused the page not to be available.

Oops Page

Creating Clarity

Due to privacy concerns, information entered in the declaration generator cannot be stored. Meaning the user cannot retrieve their work in progress if they refresh the page while using the declaration generator.


I updated the language to what the team called the 'Oops' page to 'Page Refreshed' to adopt an informative voice and tone. Creating clear guidance for people on what happened and the next step to take.


The choice shift away from active to passive tone reflects the pages point of no return.

Where to Re-direct the User?

While I initially used a "RETURN HOME" call to action in my drafts. I realized it may not be the best course of action. After all, losing all of your work could lead to feeling stressed and frustrated.


Redirecting users to the home page would increase the number of clicks needed to return to the start of the letter generator, potentially exacerbating their negative emotional state.

How can we ease stress and assist in maintaining momentum after a user loses all of their work?

Letter Generator User Flow - Where We Spent Most of Our Time

Choosing a Call to Action

After seeing the possible locations where people could loose their progress in the letter generator I suggested that the call to action direct people to the start of the letter generator. That way they would not need to go through the onboarding screens again. Reducing friction if they decide to continue working in the letter generator after losing progress and allowing them to START AGAIN.

What I Learned

While overlooked error messages are an integral part of digital products. They need to provide the necessary information to guide the user when something goes wrong. They also create a sense of completion.

Content design influences every aspect of a project from start to finish. We plan, organize, create goals and objectives and help set the team up for success.

claudjankowski@gmail.com

©2024 by Claudia Jankowski

claudjankowski@gmail.com

©2024 by Claudia Jankowski