ITPEC IP April 2020 Question 100
When an error message to be displayed by an application program is designed, which of the following is an appropriate item to be considered?
Explanation
The action the user should take, shown briefly and precisely with the message — an error message is designed for the user who has to recover.
An error message is part of the user interface. A good one says in the user's words what went wrong and, above all, what to do next, such as "The date must be entered as YYYY/MM/DD. Correct the date and press OK." Kept short and specific, it lets the user fix the problem and continue without calling for help. Technical details for developers belong in logs, not on the user's screen.
Answer (d)
Why not others:
- •(a) — stating only the fact and details of the error leaves the user not knowing how to deal with it; the way of handling it is exactly what the user needs
- •(b) — information for developers to find the cause means little to users and may expose internal details; it should go to a log
- •(c) — abbreviations and raw error codes are short but unreadable to users, who then cannot tell what happened or what to do
Key rule: Write error messages for the person who sees them: what happened in plain words and what to do about it, with technical diagnostics kept in logs.
Human Interface · AI-written, may contain errors
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