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6 Ways to Design for Human Error

Hermit Chavla1393 30-Jan-2019

In various fields, more than 80 percent of all accidents are because of human error. These assumptions are because it is thought that a person should have taken or not taken a possible action, but the main reason for the error is the design rather than the human. When the error occurs, we put the blame on human rather than on the imperfect design. Sometimes designers want from the user to compensate for their poor design.

Human error is generally because of a poor design. When something goes wrong, designers blame the users but in actual they are blaming their designs. Blaming someone won’t fix the error as the same error is likely to be repeated by someone else.

The main thing about the human is that you can’t be very sure about them with anything. It is a fact that even the most careful, caring, and attentive of us are going to make mistakes. And the rest of us are going to make a lot more mistakes. In web designing those mistakes could be mistyping a URL, placing wrong information in a sign-up form, etc. So here in this post, we will discuss the basic ways to account for human error when you design your websites for a website designing company

1. Clear Instructions

It is often that People see basic instructions as a bit supercilious. Human beings always assume that you know each and everything you need to know for a simple-seeming task. This is because the error occurs. We need to put instructions on any task more complex than a simple contact form.

2. Clear Warnings

Sometimes people need to have outcomes of possible actions described to them. This won’t stop the kind of people who avoid clear warnings on regular basis, and in this case, there is not much you can do for them.

And also there are people who when face any warning they don’t comprehend, will leave your website and call it a more tech-savvy relative for help. It is you who will decide whether you would deal with potential inaction for some users or more errors. Both the methods have their merits and demerits.

3. Form Validation

Form Validation is the best thing and an effective way to provide guidance to the user in the right direction. As the proper form design help users from placing the wrong text in the wrong form, form validation is best for checking information and catching forgot and typos fields. I would just say that client-side validation is not enough. If you are aiming to implement client-side validation, it would be better for you to have some on the server-side as well for the safer side.

4. Labels

Labels might be really obvious, but I have gone through with several vaguely-labeled forms on the Internet, that I had to include it. The forms that use industry jargon on a client-facing website are really worse. The forms where inputs and the labels are misaligned are simply wrong.

5. Use Both Color and Contrast

Using both color and contrast certainly helps a lot of people. It might not help people with color blindness or other visual impairments. Try to use the best way to add contrast to your context, so they are clearly visible and easily distinguished from each other. You need to pay more attention when there are two options that are using similar text but do different things.

6. Make Changes Carefully

Generally people when performing familiar tasks, operate on autopilot. Doing this is very useful for them as it makes them more efficient. There are memes that remind to write down the date correctly and they show up every year on the dot.

Your UI might need a full redesign sometimes. If so that’s okay, you don’t need to make changes too quickly. 


Updated 20-Aug-2019

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