User error protection

User error protection is the degree to which a system protects users against making errors. It is a quality attribute and, per ISO/IEC 25010, a sub-characteristic of usability, alongside others such as learnability and operability.

Protection against error takes two general forms: preventing a mistake before it happens, and limiting the damage once it has. The first shows up as input validation, disabled controls that aren’t yet valid to use, and confirmation prompts before a destructive action. The second shows up as undo, soft deletes, and clear, actionable error messages that let a user recover their intended state rather than having to start over.

Good user error protection tends to follow the principle of least astonishment. A system that behaves the way a user expects gives them fewer opportunities to go wrong in the first place, so the two attributes are usually improved by the same design decisions.

References

• ISO/IEC (2023). ISO/IEC 25010:2023 — Systems and software Quality Requirements and Evaluation (SQuaRE) — Quality model.