Guy: 11 Suggest something after the error.
Guy: Welcome to Service Design Principles I'm Guy Martin joined by the author of the Service
Design Principles series of Books. Founder of the Swiss Innovation Academy and Service Design
Practitioner, The Empowering Daniele Catalanotto.
Daniele: Thanks, Guy. Such a pleasure to be here. Your your your adjectives always make me smile.
Guy: I'm glad. I'm glad we'll run out of the positive ones and we'll have to start using the
negative ones soon.
Daniele: Oh,
Guy: So.
Daniele: that. I'm excited for
Guy: So every episode that we do on this podcast, we're looking at one of the principles from your
book, the Service Design Principles one to 100 and today it's principle number 11. Suggest
something after the error. So as an error happened somewhere and we learned from principle
ten we've explained why that error has happened. Now what? Is that the end of the journey?
Daniele: No, indeed. No.
And you're selling that very well. You know, it's you're you're you're asking the question in
a very good way. Basically. No, it's saying that there is an there is a good thing. It's a good
start. And saying why it's and why this happened is a not a great step. But then helping people
to do something about it is even better. And so it's kind of like this levels you know, where
already if you don't speak about the errors you know, good to speak about them. And then you
kind of go further in your maturity of error management, if we can say like that. And there
are very simple things you can do. You know, sometimes it's suggesting a way to get support,
sometimes it's suggesting something else where you say this is happening, we can't do anything
about it, but maybe we can give you something else to read, something you be. Maybe you'd be
interested in that, or you know, just giving something to people so that they can feel a sort
of power over the error that is happening.
Guy: Well, I think there was a good example in in the book of this and some that that most
people will be familiar with as well, right?
Daniele: Yeah. You know, the famous error page for webmasters or webmasters. This is a very old
term now. Now impugning all again. But for people who design websites, you know, there is
always this 404 page,
Guy: Yeah
Daniele: which is a page where people arrive at where the page is missing.
Guy: Yes.
Daniele: And this might happen for many reasons because maybe there was a page before and then
the person arrives at a page that doesn't exist anymore, or the person just mistyped the URL and
arrives at the wrong place. And usually what happens is that people, the first thing they did
was just write 404 error and then that was it. Then with time designers noticed, Oh, we should
explain what this is and said this page isn't dead, it doesn't exist. Which is the why. And
then designers being designers, they thought, let's make them beautiful. And so that's why you
see all these illustrations and it's fun things and which is good, but still doesn't solve the
problem. And then you have now a whole different way of doing it where people, when you arrive on
their four hundreds or four page people, for example, what they do is they show you this
search box and they say there is an error. This page is missing. What were you looking for? Here
is the search box. Then there are other ways to do it, which are quite a bit more technological,
but which can be fun, is looking at the words which are in the URL and then automatically
finding pages that contain these keywords. And
Guy: Ah, that's smart.
Daniele: then you can say, did you mean did you want it to go there? You know, that's like a
suggestion. And then there is just the other way where if you don't have that technological
possibility, you can just look at the stats of your website and see most people are searching
90% of people who come in on a website just look for a contact and then say, okay, maybe we
provide that, and then obviously there is the classical thing where we say there was an error.
Would you like to report here or do you have a question? And then it helps people to do
something about it?
Guy: I remember those 404 pages, and someone would make a little game out of it,
Daniele: Yeah
Guy: and you could do that sort of thing. And I thought, okay, that's a it's an interesting
choice, actually. And it was fun for a bit. But in terms of what the user is doing, they're not
looking for that game. So it's a nice little gimmick, I suppose. But for the user, it's
better that they come to that 404 page. And as you say, okay, now they've got choices of
getting to what they want to do. They want to do something. They had an agenda when they when
they came across your 404, you weren't able to deliver that either by their mistake or yours.
So how do they get to where they want to be? And it's not going to be through a game as fun as
that might be unless they're looking for a game. But yeah, providing frequently visited pages or,
you know, analyzing your search and stuff like that. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. So and
then, and then again you say it's it's empowering the user so they have the choice of
where do they want to go next. Here's some options that are probably in the direction of
where you were going initially before you were, pulled out of this flow by this by this error.
Here's some help to get back into the flow again.
Daniele: Yeah, indeed. And, and one thing that
you just inspired me from our, from one of our past conversations is also to one thing that you
can add to it is to show what you're doing about it. So for example was 404
Daniele: pages a A few people do that quite well as they write. We've been notified that there
was an error here. So it's basically said, okay, we have a log system which says that every time
there is a 404 page showing up, it's going to take the URL and send it to someone to check. Is
this just someone who mistyped or is this a page that should exist but that we deleted
Guy: Right.
Daniele: and or is it a page that exists but that has changed the URL and we forgot to put
the redirects, you know, and so but basically the here show we not only you can do something
about right about it, but we are already doing something about it. And that's, that's that's
powerful that
Guy: Yeah, for sure. I mean, I've been tempted sometimes to then write an email or something to
say, Oh, you've got a broken link here or this isn't working, but when you get that message
upfront, it's like, Oh, well, I've already taken care of it. So, hopefully when I come back in a
month, if I, if I make the same mistake, I it won't be well, if I make the mistake, it might
still happen. But if the mistake was theirs, then then that will be gone. The next time I
visit.
Daniele: And obviously there is a lot to do with errors. I think one thing to remember is just
this one is that
even if you don't have the technology, because I'm often thinking about small businesses who
might hear about that and say, Yeah, great, but my website doesn't run on a system where I can
do that, where I can, you know, automatically check the URL. But you know, there is something
you can do, you know, and, and, and it's always thinking of in the limits of what I have. How
could I suggest something here?
Guy: Yeah. This was an interruption to the flow that the user wanted. How do we get them back on
track? As easily as possible.
Daniele: exactly.
Guy: Great. Thank you, Daniele.
Daniele: Thanks to you mate!