why do error messages go like “install failure error 0001” instead of telling the user what’s wrong
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Sometimes errors are the user’s fault and we can clearly tell them what to do EX: The user tries to open an Excel spreadsheet in Photoshop. We can tell the user “we don’t know what that file is, please make sure you’re opening only .PSD files” and the user can fix it.
Other errors are more to do with the internals of the program breaking. A lot of the times this info is just jargon and completely useless to a user, and is a lot more likely to get lost in translation when actually seeking technical help.
EX: A user tries to open a Photoshop file in Photoshop and gets an “ERROR: Missing ID in Layer Manifest[0].” Wtf does this even mean? You’re guess is as good as mine, and it’s not like you could even fix it even if you knew since there are no options in Photoshop to modify that data. On top of that, there’s a high likelihood that the user will report it as “Layer issue,” or “How to fix missing ID in Photoshop,” which only complicates troubleshooting. However, the user saying “Hey I got ‘Error: 0001′” means tech support can easily look it up and find the exact error message along with some troubleshooting steps to help resolve it.
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