Error message alignment

The problem: Several months after the launch of the Babbel Live MVP, the engineers had compiled a list of various error codes that had been deemed “edge” cases, none of which had user-facing messaging yet. 

The solution: Messages for all error cases, even the more infrequent ones. We didn’t have an error message template to work from, so I took the opportunity of working on 20 errors at once to start creating content patterns for our content design team to work from and add to.

How we got there: One of the developers compiled a list of the error codes that were appearing, many of which they hadn’t anticipated before releasing the MVP. We worked together to document the technical explanation of the error and the most likely situation a learner would see it in. From there, I wrote the copy for each message, aligning the structure across messages whenever possible, and facilitated the creation of localization keys and translations.

The challenges: Because most of the messages would be seen because of time-based changes (when a user had left a window open too long, for example), it was hard to offer any suggestion to resolve the problem. Many of them simply ended with the instruction to refresh the page, rather than a more helpful action.

The biggest win: Although it was only 20 or so messages, there were enough for me to really start implementing a pattern for our error messages, which has been helpful with other errors, as well as with starting to form the basis of error messaging templates, an effort I’m currently driving.