Usability Heuristic(guidelines) 5: Error Prevention

This principle is about designing interfaces to reduce the likelihood of users making mistakes. It’s like having guardrails on a highway.

What is Error Prevention?

The goal here is to make errors harder to commit and offer safety nets when things go wrong. In UX design, this is achieved through confirmations, validation checks, and sensible defaults.

Example

Imagine you’re typing out an important email and confidently hit “Send.” You remember later that you mentioned an attachment but didn’t attach anything!

Gmail’s got your back with a pop-up that says, “It looks like you mentioned an attachment but didn’t include one. Attach now?” This feature not only saves your face but also prevents you from sending that awkward follow-up email.

How to Implement It?

1. Validation Checks: Like showing an error message when users leave a required field empty in a form.
2. Confirmation Dialogs: When performing critical actions, such as deleting data, ask users for confirmation with a dialog like “Are you sure you want to delete this?”
3. Sensible Defaults: Provide reasonable options by default so users don’t have to guess or make choices prone to error.