10,000 years ago, before the advent of written language, the earliest app developers relied entirely on symbols and animation to convey a message to users. Of course, we still rely on non-lingual cues as shorthand for specific actions and to help people navigate the app, but in the last few hundred years we have also started to include copy.
Copy makes it possible to communicate complex concepts, but in its ubiquity it can get overlooked. Not so in the Tumblr app. Like those early app developers who tracked antelope migration patterns on cave walls and first used magnifying glasses to represent search, we take a very personal approach to copy. In this post we want to share a few places we’ve tried to lift Tumblr out of the drab standardization of many modern day apps.
Error messages
When we’re rewriting error messages we try to keep two things in mind: Make the error as comprehensible as possible and, if possible, suggest a solution. Here’s a long-retired string from our Android app:
<string name=“photo_capture_exception”>Unable to open camera to capture photo.</string>
This error occurs not because of anything the app did, but because—incredibly—on Android, you can delete your camera. But the user wouldn’t know that from the error. They’d just think the app sucks, give it a bad rating, and probably stop using Tumblr all together. That’s why it now reads:
Believe it or not, you don’t have a camera app installed.
The new version tells the user 1) why they can’t take a picture (no camera app), and 2) how to resolve it (go get one).
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