ABSTRACT
Shneiderman (1998) suggests that error messages should state specifically what occurred (in language that the user can understand), be positive, and offer suggestions on how to respond. However, most software applications and operating systems unfortunately do not follow even the most basic guidelines that Shneiderman developed for error messages. Better error messages were discovered to improve user performance in a number of tasks (Shneiderman,
1982). Unfortunately, many current software applications still use terms such as fatal and illegal in their error messages. An error message saying something along the lines of “A fatal exception OE has occurred at 017F: BFFAADOB. The current application will be terminated” will in no way assist the user in responding to the error situation. In fact, this type of error message will likely confuse and frustrate the user. The user will not understand what has occurred and will not be able to respond in an appropriate manner. It is possible that the user will perform an inappropriate action, and instead of successfully exiting from the error sequence, a more serious error may occur, which is harder to recover from (Carroll & Carrithers, 1984).
