Day 14, 14-day UX Writing Challenge
The Prompt
UX Writing Challenge: Day 14
Scenario: a user is shopping using a price comparison app that boasts “real-time” pricing on items. As they are checking the price of an item, something goes wrong. The problem is unknown.
Challenge: write a message that informs the user that they cannot access the app right now. You cannot specify “why” the app doesn’t work, you also want them to continue using the app.
Headline: 30 characters max
Body: 120 characters max
Button(s): 15 characters max
Ideation Process
This challenge has a soundtrack.
Something New, by Trip Lee — https://youtu.be/XJTjdDJ-TFg?si=cuSUWAM2gKGqOnGH
Our user is a sneakerhead called William. William is a young, urban professional who has a love for sneakers and collects them as a hobby. He works hard to indulge himself with the latest sneakers on the market. But the hottest sneakers are pricey, and this makes his hobby an expensive one. To stay within his budget, William uses a price comparison app so he can get the best deals.
He’s currently shopping for the Nike Air Jordan 30 — Cosmos. As always, he’s using the price comparison app to find the best price. Unfortunately, there is a problem.
For some reason, the app is not working.
We have to communicate this to William. This means we have to use an error message.
On Day 9, we learned about the elements of a good error message.
A good error message identifies the problem, explains its cause, and gives a solution¹. That’s in typical cases. However, in some cases, like this one, it’s difficult to pinpoint exactly what the problem is. This is quite common.
In the usage of digital products, error messages may have to be written for a variety of reasons.²
These include:
- When something is wrongly entered, or omitted completely
- When something is being requested that is unavailabe, or doesn’t exist (eg. the classic 404 error message)
- When a process fails
In William’s case, a process (using the price comparison service) has failed. Because we don’t know exactly what is wrong, we cannot give him that information.
What we can do is to
- Tell him that there is a problem
- Explain how the problem affects his usage of the app
- Give him options with regards to the way forward
An error means that William is losing time, and in the fast-paced world of buying rare sneakers with fluctuating prices, time is literally money. This error will doubtless be an inconvenience to William, and it is important that the message is delivered in a concise and empathetic manner.
The Result
This design tells William that something is wrong.
It also gives him reassurance by telling him that it’s being worked on, and that he’ll have a notification when the service is back.
Also, he can click ‘Get Help’ if he’d like to speak to support, or ‘Home’ to go back to the homepage.
Hopefully, the service comes back in time for William to get his sneakers.
Thank you for reading, for clapping, and giving me valuable feedback. I appreciate you!
If you’re new, you can find the previous challenges here. I’d love to hear your feedback as well.
See you when the final challenge is up!
[1]: Saadia Minhas. How to Write Good Error Messages https://uxplanet.org/how-to-write-good-error-messages-858e4551cd4#:~:text=A%20good%20error%20message%20has,out%20of%20the%20erroneous%20situation.
[2]: Slater Katz. The ultimate error message UX writing guide https://www.thegiggal.com/ux-writing-error-messages/
