The Challenge

One of my current projects is to making our error and alert messages on the website more flexible and usable. I've actually been thinking about this subject for a little while. I've been noticing some very nice messaging on some of the bigger Web 2.0 sites, such as Flickr and YouTube. They've been doing a great job of letting the user know when they'll be performing maintenance, without negatively affecting the user experience. I know some people aren't terribly keen on "Web 2.0" and other buzz words like it, but you have to admit that some of these sites have really gotten it right when it comes to a rich, usable and cohesive web experience. We're seeing a higher demand for this kind of web experience in surveys and feedback from users. They simply expect and demand these kind of experiences from their online services such as Online Banking.

Of course when I think of website usability, I think of useit.com. This is a wonderful site by Jakob Nielsen. This man knows usability. To say he is an expert in usability and the web experience is an understatement. So I felt sure I'd find exactly what I was looking for on his site. While I did find articles that I felt were relevant to the topic. I didn't find quite what I had in mine. However I definitely think every web developer should read his article on Error Message Guidelines, it's a wealth of information. One of the best take aways I got from the article, is that a common mistake that we all make is to simply display some red text as an error, a thinking that's good enough. Well that's all well and good, but what if the user is color blind, or is viewing your site with a screen reader like Jaws. These are factors we should keep in mind but often don't.

However like I said I was looking for something a little different. You see in our implementation of error and alerts we'll put up a variety of messages. Error messages letting them know that a transaction was not completed and the reason why. Warning messages about upcoming scheduled maintenance. Information messages that let the users know about new features that are available to them. We want this messages to be highly visible to the user, without being completely annoying and making them feel as if they are being bombarded. As you know this is not an easy task.

The Idea

I wanted to create an easy to use and intuitive method for conveying to the user the importance of any given message. There may be multiple messages for the user to read. So this system must allow users to quickly identify which messages are important versus which messages are just information to them is mandatory. So I decided I needed to use a design metaphor that allows me to relay the severity of a message to the user in a way that's easy to understand.

As mentioned in a Jakob Nielsen article using a metaphor can be tough, especially when you are designing for international usability. So I decided to use a metaphor that most people use everyday, Traffic signs. Most people see traffic signs and understand what will be required of them at a glance. That is by a very specific and exacting design. Have you ever seen the design specifications related to Standard Highway Signs? These documents are huge. I mean there is not one thing left to chance. Font size, font weight, font color, sign size, sign ratios for curves, all of it has been meticulously documented. The Regulatory sign section alone is almost 200 pages.

So with my design metaphor I won't be as strict as the Federal Highway Administration, I'm just going to use red, yellow and blue in my palette. This quick visual aid should help to get the point across nicely. Red means, stop, and pay attention, yellow means that this is a warning message and some action maybe needed soon. And blue of course means that this message is informational, and no action will be required of you.

Along with the color coding, Icons will be used to help show the severity of the message. Since these Icons will be graphics, we can assign them a severity in the image alt attribute as well. This should take care of both those who are color blind as well as those that use screen readers.

Implementing the Idea

Up to this point I have an idea, I have a color scheme picked out that works with the design metaphor I've chosen, but now I need to figure out how to best implement this idea. Specifically I need to figure out what size my message should be and more importantly where the location of the message will be. The location is key to our message being read. I need to choose a location that assures that the message will be read, while also making sure that I'm not changing the design that would cause a negative user experience After that will need to make it fit into our existing design. Fortunately this is a wheel we don't have to reinvent.

Most people read websites in a very specific and repeated pattern. This pattern is actually shaped like the letter F, therefore it's called The F-Shaped Reading Pattern. Again useit.com has an article on "F-Shaped Pattern for Reading Web Content" that I believe all web developers should read. It's well worth the time. One of the things this article mentions is that users simply will not read all of your content. They will choose to scan the page looking for what they feel is the most relevant information. So that very top line of the F Shaped Pattern is critical. The most important information needs to be on this line.

So do we put these messages at the top of the page? No, no we don't. Why?, because that isn't where the F Shape Pattern for web content starts! Again we go back to our usability Guru Jakob Nielsen to find out why. This time we're going to look at an article called "Banner Blindness: Old and New Findings", what they discovered is that anything above the primary navigation is simply ignored. Users have learned that content above the primary navigation is advertising, so they simply don't look at this area any more. Where does the top of the F Shaped Pattern start then? At the top of the content area, of course.

Now that we know where we should place our message, lets see how to make it fit into our design. I've mocked up a couple of wireframes for a pretty basic 2 column website design. In the first wireframe design we have just the basic site layout. Logo in the top left hand corner, primary navigation next to that. Below the logo we have the secondary navigation and next to that is the content area. Now in our second wireframe design with the message is only change very subtly. We basically just move the content area down a little bit so that it's now at the top of the F Shape Pattern. However we only do this when we have a message to display. This way we do no disturb the F Shape Pattern. The last thing we want to do is change the way our users read the content.

This brings up another very important point. If a message is warning or informational the users should be able to choose not to see the message again. This allows the user to acknowledge the message, but also to clear it out of their view. Remember we're not pretending that the message is the content they wanted. We are just telling them about an error, a warning or something informational. I feel that error messages are to be shown until the error is resolved. Warning messages are shown once per session. And Informational messages can have a "please don't show me again" option. Along with our design metaphor this helps cement in the users mind the importance of each of the messages.

Conclusion

A little research into usability goes a long way in designing anything on your site. Fortunately there are great resources out there that we can use and incorporate into our designs. We don't have to reinvent the wheel. In fact it's best if we don't, because using a "standard" way of doing things allows our users to better and more quickly navigate and use our site. In the end, isn't that really what we as designers want?

Happy Designing