Applying Usability Engineering Principles to the Design and Testing of Warning Messages

Abstract

Very little has been published on methods for creating and testing text messages for product warnings. This paper describes how the three main principles of usability engineering (prototyping, empirical user testing, and iterative design) can be applied to the design and evaluation of warning text. Pre-prototype activities that help define the warning requirements are described, followed by a discussion of guidelines for creating and testing design prototypes. Finally, a methodology for formally testing the effectiveness of warning text is presented. The procedure described should be useful to human factors practitioners who are responsible for creating or evaluating textual warnings.