skip to main content
10.1145/3290607.3312978acmconferencesArticle/Chapter ViewAbstractPublication PageschiConference Proceedingsconference-collections
abstract

The Impact of "Cosmetic" Changes on the Usability of Error Messages

Published: 02 May 2019 Publication History

Abstract

Programmatic errors are often difficult to resolve due to poor usability of error messages. Applying theories of visual perception and techniques in visual design, we created three visual variants of a representative error message in a modern UI framework. In an online experiment, we found that the visual variants led to substantial improvements over the original error message in both error comprehension and resolution. Our results demonstrate that seemingly cosmetic changes to the presentation of an error message can have an oversized impact on its usability.

Supplementary Material

ZIP File (lbw0273pvc.zip)
Preview video captions
MP4 File (lbw0273p.mp4)
Preview video

References

[1]
Titus Barik, Denae Ford, Emerson Murphy-Hill, and Chris Parnin. 2018. How Should Compilers Explain Problems to Developers? In Proc. ESEC/FSE ?18, 633--643.
[2]
Titus Barik, Chris Parnin, and Emerson Murphy-Hill. 2017. One - at a time: What do we know about presenting human-friendly output from program analysis tools? Workshop at PLATEAU'17.
[3]
Stéphane Conversy. 2014. Unifying Textual and Visual: A Theoretical Account of the Visual Perception of Programming Languages. In Proc. Onward! '14, 201--212.
[4]
Björn Hartmann, Daniel MacDougall, Joel Brandt, and Scott R. Klemmer. 2010. What Would Other Programmers Do: Suggesting Solutions to Error Messages. In Proc. CHI '10, 1019--1028.
[5]
Jakob Nielsen. 2001. Error Message Guidelines. Nielsen Norman Group. Retrieved January 1, 2019 from https://www.nngroup.com/articles/error-message-guidelines
[6]
Jakob Nielsen. 2006. Progressive Disclosure. Nielsen Norman Group. Retrieved January 1, 2019 from https://www.nngroup.com/articles/progressive-disclosure
[7]
Hyunmin Seo, Caitlin Sadowski, Sebastian Elbaum, Edward Aftandilian, and Robert Bowdidge. 2014. Programmers' Build Errors: A Case Study (at Google). In Proc. ICSE '14, 724--734.
[8]
Mads Soegaard. 2018. Laws of Proximity, Uniform Connectedness, and Continuation -- Gestalt Principles (2). The Interaction Design Foundation. Retrieved January 1, 2019 from https://www.interactiondesign.org/literature/article/laws-of-proximity-uniform-connectedness-and-continuation-gestalt-principles-2
[9]
V. Javier Traver. 2010. On Compiler Error Messages: What They Say and What They Mean. Advances in Human-Computer Interaction 2010: 1--26.

Cited By

View all
  • (2023)First Steps Towards Predicting the Readability of Programming Error MessagesProceedings of the 54th ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education V. 110.1145/3545945.3569791(549-555)Online publication date: 2-Mar-2023
  • (2023)How Do Programming Students Read and Act upon Compiler Error Messages?Augmented Cognition10.1007/978-3-031-35017-7_11(153-168)Online publication date: 9-Jul-2023
  • (2021)On Designing Programming Error Messages for Novices: Readability and its Constituent FactorsProceedings of the 2021 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3411764.3445696(1-15)Online publication date: 6-May-2021
  • Show More Cited By

Index Terms

  1. The Impact of "Cosmetic" Changes on the Usability of Error Messages

    Recommendations

    Comments

    Information & Contributors

    Information

    Published In

    cover image ACM Conferences
    CHI EA '19: Extended Abstracts of the 2019 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems
    May 2019
    3673 pages
    ISBN:9781450359719
    DOI:10.1145/3290607
    Permission to make digital or hard copies of part or all of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for third-party components of this work must be honored. For all other uses, contact the Owner/Author.

    Sponsors

    Publisher

    Association for Computing Machinery

    New York, NY, United States

    Publication History

    Published: 02 May 2019

    Check for updates

    Author Tags

    1. developer experience
    2. error message
    3. experiment
    4. presentation technique
    5. programming

    Qualifiers

    • Abstract

    Conference

    CHI '19
    Sponsor:

    Acceptance Rates

    Overall Acceptance Rate 6,164 of 23,696 submissions, 26%

    Upcoming Conference

    CHI 2025
    ACM CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems
    April 26 - May 1, 2025
    Yokohama , Japan

    Contributors

    Other Metrics

    Bibliometrics & Citations

    Bibliometrics

    Article Metrics

    • Downloads (Last 12 months)25
    • Downloads (Last 6 weeks)3
    Reflects downloads up to 20 Jan 2025

    Other Metrics

    Citations

    Cited By

    View all
    • (2023)First Steps Towards Predicting the Readability of Programming Error MessagesProceedings of the 54th ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education V. 110.1145/3545945.3569791(549-555)Online publication date: 2-Mar-2023
    • (2023)How Do Programming Students Read and Act upon Compiler Error Messages?Augmented Cognition10.1007/978-3-031-35017-7_11(153-168)Online publication date: 9-Jul-2023
    • (2021)On Designing Programming Error Messages for Novices: Readability and its Constituent FactorsProceedings of the 2021 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems10.1145/3411764.3445696(1-15)Online publication date: 6-May-2021
    • (2021)Error messages in relational database management systemsJournal of Systems and Software10.1016/j.jss.2021.111034181:COnline publication date: 1-Nov-2021
    • (2020)The Effects of Compilation Mechanisms and Error Message Presentation on Novice Programmer BehaviorProceedings of the 51st ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education10.1145/3328778.3366882(759-765)Online publication date: 26-Feb-2020
    • (2019)Compiler Error Messages Considered UnhelpfulProceedings of the Working Group Reports on Innovation and Technology in Computer Science Education10.1145/3344429.3372508(177-210)Online publication date: 18-Dec-2019

    View Options

    Login options

    View options

    PDF

    View or Download as a PDF file.

    PDF

    eReader

    View online with eReader.

    eReader

    HTML Format

    View this article in HTML Format.

    HTML Format

    Media

    Figures

    Other

    Tables

    Share

    Share

    Share this Publication link

    Share on social media