A lot of new products and services are released frequently. Many of them have the same purpose. Some succeed and grow, others fail. There is an important detail that helps them shine more than others: The level of tolerance with customer's errors.

Although "support user's mistakes" is a common item in UI design principles lists, it's not uncommon to notice companies ignoring it.

Considering that mistakes happen is as important as creating processes to accomplish a task itself.

For new, old, frequent, or sporadic users, this is essential.

It's not clever to invest money and time in a project leaving aside this golden rule.

I’m sure you felt thankful when you received tolerance

When we regret something we said, it's great that people understand our apologies and accept that we changed our minds.

If we buy something but after come to the conclusion that it was not a good investment when the store accepts returns is giving us a chance to step back if our idea changed.

See? It's part of life offering people the option to think differently and recur. And we will always feel grateful for that.

I know that life itself doesn't have a Control + Z, but we, people, can offer to others the chance to make things easier.

What we offer for customers needs to follow the same concepts of what we offer for every people we relate with.

Also, I'm sure you felt totally frustrated when some mistake you made couldn’t be erased

On the other hand, imagine that you were walking in a living room in a friend's house and accidentally you hit a glass ornament. It broke all over when it hit the ground. There is nothing you can do to erase this error. (Of course, you can buy a new one, but it's not the point here)

I know, I don't understand why people opt for decoration so easy to break as well, but the fact is when the damage is done and there is nothing else to do to repair it, it's totally frustrating.

Transferring this same situation to a common product like a picture gallery, imagine confuse moving 100 photos to another folder with deleting them without the possibility to undo.

While it's not possible to avoid that glass will break hitting hard against a surface, it's totally possible to design an application where a decisive action has the option to be undone.

Gmail treats the user well

Although sending emails to the trash is not definitive and it's possible to recover it, Gmail shows an option to undo the act in case we did it per mistake.

But, deleting emails from the trash is definitive, so Gmail asks to confirm if the user is sure to delete all conversations in the trash when the “Empty Trash” option is selected. It permits that any mistake committed has a second chance to be fixed.

Lack of empathy ruins people’s lives on different levels

Once I worked on a redesign of a SaaS platform to manage offices wherewith the research I conducted I learned that the users, who were office employees, were developing bad feelings like frustration, low self-esteem, and fear to work in using a non-friendly software that mistakes could bring a lot of problems without tolerance.

They were obligated to use it because the product was a work tool, so they could not stop using it and it was influencing their personal life since the bad feelings started becoming part of their personalities.

Don Norman defines the user errors in 2 categories

Don Norman says that there are two categories of user errors:
slips and mistakes.

When slips occur

Slips normally happen when the person is acting automatically and it can cause distraction. Also, another reason is, as the name says, users accidentally slip the wrong way.

It's very common to happen with experienced users since as they think they mastered it, so their attention is not so focused on what they are doing anymore.

When mistakes occur

It happens when the user interprets incorrectly what needs to be done and defines a wrong goal to accomplish.

Page Laubheimer mentions an interesting observation verified during user testing with children conducted on Nielsen and Norman group. A lot of games for kids start with a short video, it can be a tutorial or advertising and the users are used to that. But if the video is very similar to the proper game, children won’t get that it is only a video and will try to interact with them.

They will be misled and commit mistakes because the interface didn’t act as the user expected.

And the user has expectations based on previous experiences registered on their long-term memory.

For both errors types, of course, a design should guide the users correctly and work with familiar elements and processes to prevent them to happen. But if this type of error occurs and they will, the user will need to be alerted or have a way to solve it.

Be inspired with 5 common solutions used on the web to deal with errors

1. Permit the user returns

2. Confirmation before taking a decisive action

3. Undo what was done

4. Remember what the user may forget

5. Be friendly and give suggestions

Conclusion

The good design prevents human errors. Always.

During the step of defining user journeys, the processes to give the chance to undo decisive acts or alert about the lack of possibility to undo a task have to be considered and defined as important, not only as some additional part.

The fact is, that there are a bunch of similar products and services out there. What will make a competitor better than the other is the quality level of what is delivered. And the level of human compassion on it makes the whole difference.

Better take more time, increase the project's cost a bit more to have a satisfactory end result instead of having more of the same with blocks not supporting people's mistakes and slips that will bring headaches to the end-users during their daily.

Thanks for reading,
Cíntia Antunes