<- Product Newsletter /

#37 - Types of user errors

Sent the January 26th
Author face
Article written by
Juan Jesús Millo

What is a user error and what types are there?

How many times have you walked down the street and stepped on something you shouldn't have? How many times have you turned off the play instead of suspending or restarting? How many times have you phoned someone you shouldn't have? All these situations are not mistakes you have made, they are slips.

A mistake is something you wanted to do but you don't succeed because it's not the right way, no matter how hard you try, you won't get it, like pushing a door when it tells you to pull it, no matter how hard you push, it will never open.

On the other hand, a slip is when, while performing the task, you don't pay attention to what is necessary and do something you didn't want to do, such as pressing an icon app instead of another on your smartphone, because you know perfectly well where it is, but you are not paying attention to the task itself.

This type of error occurs mostly in expert users, users who know the task perfectly well, but because of their knowledge, they sacrifice performance for attention to the task and slips occur.

How to avoid these mistakes

To avoid this type of error, we must guide the user to the task, minimising errors (it is always better to minimise them in the design phases, rather than communicate them in the form of feedbacks), creating limits in the flow-task, offering auto/suggestions when writing, and formatting the user's inputs to more scannable ones, such as the typical credit card format; if the user is writing the numbers, these are automatically separated, the user will be able to recognise them more quickly, reducing this type of error.

Articles & Ideas

The State of Design in 2021

It wasn’t that long ago when good product design meant something that simply looked cool. But how cool something looks doesn’t really matter as much anymore. Abstract.design

Enterprise UX is amazing. Change my mind

Why this under-represented but widespread design field comes with lots of unique and interesting challenges. Yichen He

Design Principles For The Web

I’d like to take you back in time, just over 100 years ago, at the beginning of World War One. It’s 1914. The United States would take another few years to join, but the European powers were already at war in the trenches, as you can see here. Jeremy Keith (Adactio)

Using “How Might We” Questions to Ideate on the Right Problems

Constructing how-might-we questions generates creative solutions while keeping teams focused on the right problems to solve. Licia Li

Design systems are ecosystems for collaboration

In 2014 I build what I called my first proper UI component library. What made it proper was the fact that I could reuse components and combine them to create new components and layouts. Niko Laitinen

How Atlassian’s design teams go from idea to execution

Guaranteed design success isn’t something that can only be claimed by Atlassian, though. The team has graciously offered to share their top templates to help teams like yours. Use the three below and see how your team can lock in needed information right at the start of any project. Natalie Coy

Staff Design - Navigating the individual contributor career path

Staff Design is a collection of interviews exploring how product designers navigate the individual contributor path to its highest levels. Brian Lovin

Products

Microanalytics

Free website analytics. A lightweight, privacy-focused alternative to Google Analytics.

Open Design

Unlock the power of programmatic design. Meet the first developer toolkit to read, change, and display data from design files to create any design automation or tool.

UX Audit

Users leave your website? Unlock UX audit checklist in Notion. It's free!

Walling

Collaborative walls for ideas, projects and research. Walling is your space to capture ideas, organize content and visually work through projects and research.

Brainiac - Cognitive Biases (retired)

Build better customer-oriented products, increase conversions, and make your brand stand out with the online database of 150 cognitive biases, principles & models that influence your customer's decisions.

Paper Apps™ DUNGEON

Hi, I'm Tom Brinton. I'm creating a procedurally-generated pencil and paper dungeon that you can easily carry in the back pocket of your jeans.

Remote Jobs 

All remote jobs links have been removed, as the positions were fulfilled.