Communicating to the customer is a very important part of creating a good user experience, and one important way of doing this is to provide information at just the place the customer needs it, when he or she is about to make a decision.

Here’s an excellent example from Microsoft Windows:

In this example, I am about to make a serious mistake. Windows is kind enough to

• give me a strong warning,
• provide background information to help me understand (including telling me how I am logged in),
• tell me what I probably want to do instead, and
• break the information into digestible chunks (which people prefer).

Thank you Microsoft!

This message may seem pretty long, but it’s a complex problem and all the information is relevant. Perhaps they could have done it a little bit better by

· starting with the warning,

· using bullets, and

· providing even more structure to make the large amount of information less daunting.

Example: