Need someone to lead product management at your software company? I create software for people that create software and I'm looking for my next opportunity. Check out my resume and get in touch.

Writting helpful error messages

Freshness Warning
This blog post is over 21 years old. It's possible that the information you read below isn't current and the links no longer work.

The job of an error message is to inform the user of a problem and help them solve it. "Could you repeat that in English?" has examples of poor error messages, an analysis of why they don’t do their jobs, and outlines four rules for error messages.

RickySilk
March 22, 2002 4:09 PM

Microsoft error messages are the worst! Especially when you're working with vb/ado argh!

abhay
July 26, 2003 6:50 PM

yeah it is quite right

This discussion has been closed.

Recently Written

Mastery doesn’t come from perfect planning (Dec 21)
In a ceramics class, one group focused on a single perfect dish, while another made many with no quality focus. The result? A lesson in the value of practice over perfection.
The Dark Side of Input Metrics (Nov 27)
Using input metrics in the wrong way can cause unexpected behaviors, stifled creativity, and micromanagement.
Reframe How You Think About Users of your Internal Platform (Nov 13)
Changing from "Customers" to "Partners" will give you a better perspective on internal product development.
Measuring Feature success (Oct 17)
You're building features to solve problems. If you don't know what success looks like, how did you decide on that feature at all?
How I use OKRs (Oct 13)
A description of how I use OKRs to guide a team, written so I can send to future teams.
Build the whole product (Oct 6)
Your code is only part of the product
Input metrics lead to outcomes (Sep 1)
An easy to understand example of using input metrics to track progress toward an outcome.
Lagging Outcomes (Aug 22)
Long-term things often end up off a team's goals because they can't see how to define measurable outcomes for them. Here's how to solve that.

Older...

What I'm Reading

Contact

Adam Kalsey

+1 916 600 2497

Resume

Public Key

© 1999-2024 Adam Kalsey.