usability - Personal information in messages

Is it good to add some personal information (name, username or other) in success or error messages?

Answer

Igor. Content personalisation can be appropriate at times, like in an email or after login. Amongst a few, it makes the system appear more 'human', and can facilitate some personal 'bond' with the user. But one can argue that by attaching a name to a notification you won't achieve that (I see proper personalisation as real user-dependent content). Also, if overdone, you can annoy users, and repeating notifications with the user name in them can lead to exactly that. This is what I am trying to do by repeating your name in this answer, Igor.

You should ask yourself Igor whether:

• you want to personalise your system to begin with;


• you want to personalise the notifications;


• the notifications is the right place for this;

One must ask Igor, what is the benefit in having someone's name in a notification. Interfaces are often designed to meet business goals - to incite some behaviour from users. Here is a place where it could be justified:

          

But how does this apply to notifications Igor? What is the goal?

You can argue that the use of personal names in systems follows the way we speak to people on a daily basis. I urge you to consider how we use people names in conversations.

Apart from in introductions and goodbyes, we typically say someone's name as a mean of emphasis or urgency:

• "Look John, I disagree with this concept."


• "Look, I disagree with this concept."


• "I disagree with this concept."

Which one comes across as stronger?

• "John, please leave the seat down when leaving the toilets."

You could argue, Igor, that in some cases saying someone's name is somewhat patronising.

Racheet has already covered this brilliantly. If you are to include names in notifications, for consistency sake you'll have to also include them in error messages:

                                         

A message as such can really annoy users (ditto for humor, but that's a different story).

Now Igor, I think the main priority with notifications is to deliver the information in the quickest, clearest, and most-concise way possible. A plain language expert would ask you to consider these options:

               

As you can see, Igor, all these options convey the same thing. Some nice experiment you can do is to toggle your eyes between the top and bottom options - it should take you around 3 seconds to get the top one (and your brain would need to work a bit, scanning and making sense and building models and stuff); but less than a second to get the bottom option (a really brief look would suffice and it feels as if you haven't read anything at all).

The middle option should take slightly longer than the bottom one with some brain work required. To really dissect, I should add that by introducing "John," you will be reducing the flow of the sentence. This is something commas do and style guides point that out. Dostoevsky was known for not complying with this, with stop-and-go sentences along these lines being customary:

"I was, by all means, ready, although not in the same way I was in my youth, to challenge this peasant, this dirty young man, which I met at the market."

Having said that, you can argue that 'Settings saved' is somewhat cold and mechanical. 'Your settings have been saved' is more personal than 'Settings have been saved' (because of 'Your' - See this blog on the power of 'you').

Depending on the user persona and the frequency of notifications, I would go with either the 'Your settings have been saved' version or the 'Settings saved' one.