Software has a history of dull designs, ridiculous jargon and robotic error messages. Thankfully UX designers have been designing more casual and enjoyable software creating fun experiences for our users.
Tone of voice
Fun language helps builds a certain personality into your website. By approaching your content with a less serious attitude, you’ll create a more friendly and approachable style to your website. A conversational guy in the pub is much nicer to have a chat with than Mr Silver Spoon, the same goes with websites.
Delighters
How many times have you used a website or application and found a surprise which has put a smile on your face? Probably not an awful lot but you’ll sure remember those times that you did. You’ll probably mention it to someone else too.
Delighters are little easter eggs that are put into applications make the experience much more enjoyable.
Traditional errors in software are things like “Error 2129a: Please contact your system administrator”. As a user, it makes no sense and you have no idea what you did wrong or how you can fix it or how you can get around it to finish what you started. A message such as “Oh no… You forgot to add your blog post title. You’ll need to fix that before we let your post your blog” is greatly improved. This is much more fun, laid back and is of greater help to the user.
Many modern websites have taken error pages to the next step though and really gone to town in making them fun. So even though you’ve hit an error, which is usually painful to your experience, you’ll come across a delighter that has instead enhanced your experience. Take a look at this 404 page on amcharts – unexpected fun!
