Jamulus
Improve UX in error messages #1568
Replies: 5 comments 9 replies
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I was just about to mention this! I think it's because they've been written by people too close to the issues. Some of the English is also a bit off, but that's less of problem. Would it be possible to gather up all the UI messages in one place and have a look at them? (also BTW "Before sitting down to write an error message, consider whether the system can be designed such that it isn't needed.") |
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Probably. I think they are all wrapped in tr () and can therefore be found in Qt linguist. There are some messages like "No ASIO audio device (driver) found." or "No usable [...] (driver found)" which should have higher priority (= include in next relase) |
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We can also relate this to the issue about style and tone. I can brainstorm some guidelines that can be followed for both Jamulus and its site so contributors have a better idea of how/what to write. |
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Here's a draft I've made, feel free to comment on it. |
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Yes. That looks good. Probably it will be a living document which can be applied for both the docs and the software. Should this be part of the contributing file if yes: on the website or here? |
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First one: Line 563 in 0d593fc
Suggestion:
We could debate if we want to include something like "To provide low latency audio, Jamulus uses ASIO". Next one: Line 149 in 0d593fc
Suggestion:
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Yes, there are. I think there's even a video on them somewhere on YouTube. |
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These are pretty good! I think to make it even more precise, we'd need to clearly identify the problem. After that we (humbly) offer a solution. So for the first example, we can keep the first sentence and tweak it a bit:
For the second one, would it be possible to replace "The current audio device..." with "Your current audio device"? Also, I'm being a little nitpicky, but watch out for the word "which", as in this case, "that" should be used, since the description of the device/configuration defines the sentence. |
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Yes, sure! Another thought on @mulyaj's suggestion: Is "To use Jamulus, please install an ASIO Driver" clear enough that Jamulus will not open? |
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It doesn't explicitly explain what went wrong. It seems fairly easy to imply what happened, but we shouldn't need users to imply the cause of the error. |
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Ok. I'll open a PR on this to keep this discussion focused on the general topic of rewriting error messages. Edit: see #1569 |
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Opened a new PR for discussion: #1732 |
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Also linking https://onlineornot.com/what-fastly-outage-can-teach-about-writing-error-messages as reference |
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While talking to a bunch of people and helping them set up Jamulus, I had the impression that error messages in Jamulus don't always seem to be self-explanatory and lead to a fix. I think some are too long or too technical (especially those coming up with a non-functioning device due to sample rate mismatch see: #1567 and #1564 which are clear examples that the error messages don't seem to be good)
Obviously making them understandable is not an easy task. However, I'd like to start a discussion on making error messages more user friendly and maybe look through the code.
Also see:
https://uxplanet.org/how-to-write-good-error-messages-858e4551cd4
Tagging @gilgongo and @mulyaj here.
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