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Guy: 11 Suggest something after the error.

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Guy: Welcome to Service Design Principles I'm
Guy Martin joined by the author of the Service

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Design Principles series of Books. Founder of
the Swiss Innovation Academy and Service Design

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Practitioner, The Empowering Daniele Catalanotto.

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Daniele: Thanks, Guy. Such a pleasure to be here.
Your your your adjectives always make me smile.

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Guy: I'm glad. I'm glad we'll run out of the
positive ones and we'll have to start using the

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negative ones soon.

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Daniele: Oh,

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Guy: So.

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Daniele: that. I'm excited for

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Guy: So every episode that we do on this podcast,
we're looking at one of the principles from your

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book, the Service Design Principles one to 100
and today it's principle number 11. Suggest

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something after the error. So as an error
happened somewhere and we learned from principle

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ten we've explained why that error has happened.
Now what? Is that the end of the journey?

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Daniele: No, indeed. No.

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And you're selling that very well. You know,
it's you're you're you're asking the question in

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a very good way. Basically. No, it's saying that
there is an there is a good thing. It's a good

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start. And saying why it's and why this happened
is a not a great step. But then helping people

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to do something about it is even better. And so
it's kind of like this levels you know, where

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already if you don't speak about the errors you
know, good to speak about them. And then you

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kind of go further in your maturity of error
management, if we can say like that. And there

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are very simple things you can do. You know,
sometimes it's suggesting a way to get support,

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sometimes it's suggesting something else where
you say this is happening, we can't do anything

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about it, but maybe we can give you something
else to read, something you be. Maybe you'd be

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interested in that, or you know, just giving
something to people so that they can feel a sort

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of power over the error that is happening.

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Guy: Well, I think there was a good example in
in the book of this and some that that most

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people will be familiar with as well, right?

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Daniele: Yeah. You know, the famous error page
for webmasters or webmasters. This is a very old

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term now. Now impugning all again. But for
people who design websites, you know, there is

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always this 404 page,

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Guy: Yeah

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Daniele: which is a page where people arrive at
where the page is missing.

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Guy: Yes.

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Daniele: And this might happen for many reasons
because maybe there was a page before and then

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the person arrives at a page that doesn't exist
anymore, or the person just mistyped the URL and

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arrives at the wrong place. And usually what
happens is that people, the first thing they did

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was just write 404 error and then that was it.
Then with time designers noticed, Oh, we should

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explain what this is and said this page isn't
dead, it doesn't exist. Which is the why. And

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then designers being designers, they thought,
let's make them beautiful. And so that's why you

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see all these illustrations and it's fun things
and which is good, but still doesn't solve the

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problem. And then you have now a whole different
way of doing it where people, when you arrive on

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their four hundreds or four page people, for
example, what they do is they show you this

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search box and they say there is an error. This
page is missing. What were you looking for? Here

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is the search box. Then there are other ways to
do it, which are quite a bit more technological,

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but which can be fun, is looking at the words
which are in the URL and then automatically

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finding pages that contain these keywords. And

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Guy: Ah, that's smart.

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Daniele: then you can say, did you mean did you
want it to go there? You know, that's like a

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suggestion. And then there is just the other way
where if you don't have that technological

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possibility, you can just look at the stats of
your website and see most people are searching

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90% of people who come in on a website just look
for a contact and then say, okay, maybe we

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provide that, and then obviously there is the
classical thing where we say there was an error.

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Would you like to report here or do you have a
question? And then it helps people to do

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something about it?

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Guy: I remember those 404 pages, and someone
would make a little game out of it,

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Daniele: Yeah

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Guy: and you could do that sort of thing. And I
thought, okay, that's a it's an interesting

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choice, actually. And it was fun for a bit. But
in terms of what the user is doing, they're not

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looking for that game. So it's a nice little
gimmick, I suppose. But for the user, it's

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better that they come to that 404 page. And as
you say, okay, now they've got choices of

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getting to what they want to do. They want to do
something. They had an agenda when they when

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they came across your 404, you weren't able to
deliver that either by their mistake or yours.

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So how do they get to where they want to be? And
it's not going to be through a game as fun as

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that might be unless they're looking for a game.
But yeah, providing frequently visited pages or,

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you know, analyzing your search and stuff like
that. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. So and

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then, and then again you say it's it's
empowering the user so they have the choice of

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where do they want to go next. Here's some
options that are probably in the direction of

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where you were going initially before you were,
pulled out of this flow by this by this error.

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Here's some help to get back into the flow again.

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Daniele: Yeah, indeed. And, and one thing that

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you just inspired me from our, from one of our
past conversations is also to one thing that you

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can add to it is to show what you're doing about
it. So for example was 404

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Daniele: pages a A few people do that quite well
as they write. We've been notified that there

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was an error here. So it's basically said, okay,
we have a log system which says that every time

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there is a 404 page showing up, it's going to
take the URL and send it to someone to check. Is

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this just someone who mistyped or is this a page
that should exist but that we deleted

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Guy: Right.

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Daniele: and or is it a page that exists but
that has changed the URL and we forgot to put

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the redirects, you know, and so but basically
the here show we not only you can do something

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about right about it, but we are already doing
something about it. And that's, that's that's

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powerful that

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Guy: Yeah, for sure. I mean, I've been tempted
sometimes to then write an email or something to

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say, Oh, you've got a broken link here or this
isn't working, but when you get that message

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upfront, it's like, Oh, well, I've already taken
care of it. So, hopefully when I come back in a

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month, if I, if I make the same mistake, I it
won't be well, if I make the mistake, it might

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still happen. But if the mistake was theirs,
then then that will be gone. The next time I

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visit.

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Daniele: And obviously there is a lot to do with
errors. I think one thing to remember is just

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this one is that

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even if you don't have the technology, because
I'm often thinking about small businesses who

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might hear about that and say, Yeah, great, but
my website doesn't run on a system where I can

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do that, where I can, you know, automatically
check the URL. But you know, there is something

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you can do, you know, and, and, and it's always
thinking of in the limits of what I have. How

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could I suggest something here?

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Guy: Yeah. This was an interruption to the flow
that the user wanted. How do we get them back on

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track? As easily as possible.

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Daniele: exactly.

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Guy: Great. Thank you, Daniele.

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Daniele: Thanks to you mate!