When does friendly become patronizing? One of the better innovations of the Web 2.0 movement has been to bring a friendlier, more conversational tone to instruction and error message copy. I agree with 37Signals, who make the point in Defensive Design for the Web (which should be mandatory reading for anyone in web UX, btw) that sometimes this colloquial style is inappropriate, and backfires by being patronizing instead of friendly. Here’s a good example I came across the other day:
First, Twitter is “stressing out” all the fucking time lately, so while I’m not surprised by this message, I’m irritated by this vague sentiment, which immediately brings to mind some old shitty clip-art of a guy sitting at a desk, chewing a pencil, with a three-foot-tall “In” box (go on, you know the one I mean). Suddenly, I’ve gone from sympathetic to pissy, since the only reason I’m given is a human emotional state applied to a machine.
Better: Be informative, be specific, be honest. How about “Sorry! In order to improve overall performance, we’ve temporarily disabled this feature. Contact support if it’s an emergency.” See? Still friendly, but useful and (most importantly) apologetic.
Save the charming, whimsical tone for the sign up process, when you’re trying to win my business. Fail!