What Gets Displayed Matters
Error and exception handling is a part and parcel of any software development. One might be handling the errors and exceptions technically well and make it easy to troubleshoot but the user experience also matters. If something doesn’t work and the user is shown an error page obviously the first reaction would be a let down feeling. But if at all something can calm the end user a bit, it would be in a way the error message is displayed. I was trying to open a document from my Gmail in Google Docs and I got an error page (snapshot below). Though I was disappointed the document was not opening, the message caught my attention and made me smile.
