Taking the Blame Off the User

The Assignment

During a UX writing review for Revelo, a hiring solutions company, I came across a common writing mistake - an error message that puts the blame on the user. In an ideal world, there would never be any errors, but realistically that's impossible. All sorts of issues can occur. This makes informing the user with care that there is an error extremely important, as they may already be irritated that their action failed.

The Problem

During the UX writing review, I stumbled upon an error message that read "Your search didn't match any candidates :(". This message isn't all bad, it gets the point across that there was an error with the search. The user needs to revise their search in order to find what they are looking for. In this case, they were being too specific in their search query. The issue with this message is that it blames the user for the error. By using "your", the message tells the user that it is their fault the search didn't return any results.

The Solution

By changing the error message to "We couldn't find any matching candidates" it takes the blame off of the user, and the business takes responsibility for there not being any results. The section then follows with "Consider replacing or removing specific skills to broaden your candidate pool." This is clear and helpful text that explains to the user how to fix the error that has occurred.