Developing User Interfaces for Microsoft Windows

Let's look at one last simple example regarding error message text. To the user, this error message

is very similar in tone to this error message:

A far better error message is something like this one:

Why is this message better? Take a moment and come up with all the reasons. I think it's a better error message for these reasons:

• It is more specific (in that it gives the filename and folder).
• It doesn't blame the user (for example, "You failed…").
• It uses the passive voice to avoid blaming the user.
• It doesn't use technical terms (such as file path).
• It doesn't use any words with all capital letters.

These small changes make a big difference.