Design principle: Error & Forgiveness

The importance of preventing errors and forgiving them

Making errors is an integral part of the way we humans live. We trip over when we are learning to walk and we press the wrong buttons when we use new UI. This fact is very unlikely to change soon.

As Designers we must have that in mind when designing. Our designs must be aimed at preventing errors happening. Design must minimize the negative impact of errors when they occur and provide a way to reverse them if possible.

Let’s take a look at some of the main error categories that we need to pay attention to, when designing.

Slips, Lapses and Mistakes

Slips happen when you walk on ice. :) In other words, when people perform an action and the result is not what was intended due to misstep.

A good example, are typos when texting on my phone and I’ve tapped the wrong letter because my fingers are chubby. Or, when I try to handle Instagram with one hand and want to reach the far corner action icon suddenly the base of my thumb presses the home icon.

Lapses are a brief failure of concentration, memory or judgement. In a world, where the average person has short attention span lapses are frequent type of errors. Most of the cases they happen due to distraction either in the user interface or in the environment the user is using our product. Other times is just due to the passage of time.

Example of a lapse, could be the failure to pay automatically my membership subscription because the system didn’t notify me that my credit card has expired. It could have send me an email to input my new card but it didn’t. Now, it’s my fault for not remembering it!

Mistakes occur when the user has incorrect knowledge or an incorrect assessment of a situation. This develops a mental model that leads to an error most of the cases. People are goal orientated and if the system/app does not provide them with correct information/guidance they do mistakes. Usually that leads to trial and error approach. Unfortunately also to not so good user experience.

For example, I’ve been tweaking my profile settings for 10 minutes. When I am finally done, I click on…