Friday, October 23, 2015

I don't need to know about your errors

 

Look at these screenshots I captured today. (from public, released apps - if you really care which apps you should be able to make an educated guess.)
Disappointing isn't it?

Disappointing for at least two reasons:
1. There was an error
2. The app developer thought the best thing to do was put the exception details on the screen.


  • As the user of these app what am I supposed to do with this?
  • How does seeing this help me do what I was trying to do?
  • What are you trying to achieve by displaying this information?
  • Why no helpful error message?
  • Why no instructions on what to do now this has occurred?
  • Has this information been reported back to you so the app can be updated to appropriately account for this scenario in future?
  • Should I forward this to the app developer? If so, how?
  • Would additional information about what I was doing when this happened be useful to the developer? And if so how should I provide it?
  • Is it safe to keep using the app as is? Should I restart it? Or come back later? Or maybe wait for an update?
  • Are the developers already aware of this issue? Has it been reported before and they know about it? Or is this a new thing?
  • When can I expect this to be fixed? If ever?
  • and many more questions....but hopefully you get the idea.



You wouldn't do this in your app. Would you?


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