I tried to make a pot of coffee the other day. Here’s what happened:
Apparently, I caused error 4 to occur. What is error 4? No idea. I could have consulted the manual… except it went in recycling some time in the last year and a half since I got the coffee pot. Err4 probably means something to someone somewhere — an engineer or designer, perhaps — to my bleary-eyed brain on a Sunday morning, it simply means “huh? Uh, hit button. No. Hmm. Hit this button? Nope. Restart? Maybe.”
What could they have put? Four letters is pretty restrictive. Maybe one of these:
- POWR
- RSET
- OnOf
None of these are that helpful, but at least the user might get that he should cycle the power. A better idea would be to allow for 5 or 6 characters, and then use a slightly more verbose message.
Posted by Shoebox 
