06 Feb 2003 | my pick said...

Making Mistakes Well...

The Improving Web Errors doesn't sit well with me though.

06 Feb 2003 | Fish Sauce said...

Making Mistakes Well

06 Feb 2003 | Dave Tomlinson said...

Making Mistakes Well

06 Feb 2003 | fajalar said...

Making Mistakes Well.

The tag line lacks "mouthfeel."

06 Feb 2003 | Cam said...

"Making Mistakes Well" is a much better title. The title "Back on Track" doesn't mean anything, I ask myself "Back on track to doing what? Is it a book about train engineering?"

The title "Contingency Design" also has a simplicity to it that I like. As does "Designing Defensively", though the latter may be a little obscure.

06 Feb 2003 | Xavier said...

Yup, "Making Mistakes Well" sounds great!

06 Feb 2003 | Matt said...

Making Mistakes Well

06 Feb 2003 | Don Schenck said...

"Making Mistakes Well" has a nice double-entendre to it.

06 Feb 2003 | Don Schenck said...

Sorry; should be "double ententre".

06 Feb 2003 | Steve said...

I'll jump on the pile too with saying "Making Mistakes Well" is a much better title (Back on Track means nothing, and MMW is a good title without having to compare it to anything). The subtitle is week, though.

06 Feb 2003 | Steve said...

Or even "double entendre," Don...

06 Feb 2003 | Mark Hurst said...

between those two, making mistakes well, no contest.

06 Feb 2003 | ~bc said...

I'd like to have chosen from the top 5, but of these two MMW works better. The tag could use some smoothing, though.

06 Feb 2003 | Joshua Kaufman said...

Making Mistakes Well

06 Feb 2003 | Eccentric Gardener said...

Well, neither... or both, or half and half.

Don't both titles address the site visitors and not the site creators? "(Visitors) Back on Track" and "(Visitors) Making Mistakes Well." Are the designers/creators off track? Have they made mistakes? Who's going to buy the book? Does subtle sell books? Does double entendre? Maybe, but I'd guess it's more of a smack-'em-over-the-head market.

I'm inclined to think that standing in the Web Design aisle at Barnes & Noble with your head tilted sideways, you wouldn't quite know what to make of either title as you scanned the shelf of books.

But what if you (the designer/creator) ran across this book:

MAKE MISTAKES WORK
Design to get users back on track--
Improve Web Help, Forms, Error Handling,
and Other Crisis Points

Would you think it's written more for you?

Answering with questions,

E.G.

06 Feb 2003 | dean said...

i like "making mistakes well".

also, maybe the wording of the subtitle needs a little re-wording? "Improving Errors, Help, Forms and Other Crisis Points on the Web."

06 Feb 2003 | surf said...

Making Mistakes Well

06 Feb 2003 | Darrel said...

MMW

06 Feb 2003 | devil's advocate said...

Back on Track, of course.

06 Feb 2003 | Nick said...

Making Mistakes Well

But I agree the subtitle is easy to trip over. "Getting Users Back on Track" is quick and to the point... probably not perfect though.

06 Feb 2003 | Don Schenck said...

Thanks Steve! Sheesh ... I even spell-checked it at www.m-w.com, and then still typed it in wrong!

I guess I Make Mistakes Well! :-)

07 Feb 2003 | Benjy said...

Making Mistakes Well

07 Feb 2003 | Bruce Elrick said...

"Making Mistakes Well" sounds cool - hows the book going anyway - when are we going to see it?

07 Feb 2003 | mw said...

The stumble word with the subtitle is the word "help." It's the only one that doesn't sound plural and it doesn't make much sense next to the others. "Improving" is a strange word in this context too.

07 Feb 2003 | jkottke said...

Making Mistakes Well

07 Feb 2003 | tenangrymen said...

Never begin a title with a word ending in -ing, unless it is snappy. "Making Mistakes Well" is a good hook, but awkwardly worded.

07 Feb 2003 | Bill Brown said...

Making Mistakes Well

And the domain is available, so you should probably get it quick.

07 Feb 2003 | Scott M> said...

I don't like either of them, but MMW is the better of the two. But as tenangrymen said, it's awkward.

I do like Making Mistakes Work or the even stronger Make Mistakes Work.

Yeah, the more I say it the more I like:
Make Mistakes Work
Improving Web Errors, Help, Forms and Other Crisis Points

07 Feb 2003 | David Heinemeier Hansson said...

"Making Mistakes Well" is clearly the better of the two. It's fairly clever and can at least be traced back to the subject matter. "Back on track" is utterly meaningless. That title sounds more like a self-helper on alcoholism or drug addiction or jail time. It's certainly not a title for a book on error design.

Besides, using common phrases as book titles is incredible unimaginative and would seriously have me consider whether the content suffers from the lack of imagination.

It continues to escape me, though, why this book isn't called Contigency Design. You have an unique opportunity to brand an entire field of user interface design work as something originating from 37signals. You guys already own the term on Google. It's a title that begs for conference speaches and adoption by others.

So what if Contigency Design is a unknown phenomenon? You have that lovely subtitle to explain it all in human language. Should publishers have refused to grab "Usability" for the first book on that subject just because nobody knew what it meant back then? Come on...

Summary: "Making Mistakes Well" is far superior to "Back on Track" (which would be a catastrophe!), but also falls incredibly short of the obvious "Contigency Design".

07 Feb 2003 | David Heinemeier Hansson said...

BTW, I can't imagine that a smart publisher like New Riders would forgo the chance to publish the defining work on Contigency Design. Are you guys pushing it hard enough?

It's obvious that another publisher will see the window created by a book like "Making Mistakes Well", get a half-assed writer to rush a recap with nothing new called "Contigency Design", and steal all the thunder and sales.

There's so much marketing power in a clever brand like "Contigency Design" that you could create a three-paged summery, take it to the bank and they'll finance it.

Don't let this perl slip through your fingers! This would be like Addison-Wesley releasing the seminal "Design Patterns" under "Learning From The Best" or Morgan Kaufmann calling "Contextual Design" something like "Design By Talking To The Users". It would be insane.

07 Feb 2003 | David Heinemeier Hansson said...

I hope that you get some time to work on "Improving Web Errors, Help, Forms and Other Crisis Points" as well. It's almost 50% irrelevance ("and Other Crisis Points"). A crisis point is a poor substitute for something more explicit. A crisis point could be anything.

Brainstorm the three or five most important constituents of Contigency Design and list those instead. Stuff like "error messages", "preventive instructions", etc.

Be explicit.

07 Feb 2003 | stijn said...

Making Mistakes Well (and the Web better)

07 Feb 2003 | Freddy Guardado said...

MMW.

07 Feb 2003 | skimble said...

Mistakes Made Right

07 Feb 2003 | dan said...

Making my steak swell

07 Feb 2003 | KFC said...

We Do Chicken Right!

07 Feb 2003 | birdman said...

"COCA-COLA" versus "bottle of brown, fizzy liquid" It's a no-brainer. "Contingency Design" is golden.

09 Feb 2003 | kristoff said...

Don't Make Mistakes!
But yes, from those two; Making Mistakes Well.
The other one is too choo choo like.

09 Feb 2003 | Kristoffer Bohmann said...

I was in error when I recommended that the book title should be Making Mistakes Well. I choose this title because I found it sexy and famous among your readers. But the book is not about making mistakes well.

It's about preventing user errors. 1) Anticipate errors users might do on the site. 2) Prevent the errors with simple solutions. 3) Make it easy for users to recover. Factors that enables (or blocks) a truly great user experience.

Examples:
+ Audi of America prevents customers from getting locked out when their site is down for maintenance. Good.
+ Product search on Finish Line lets customers filter to get the information they want. Good.
+ FedEx users make incorrect shipping choices that could easily be avoided with some simple reorganization or a little intelligent scripting. Bad.
+ Yahoo! Travel blocks the Sign Out-link. Bad.
+ Macromedia's error message encourages the user to enter data in invalid formats. Bad.

Also: Comments on Sub-title
"Improving Web Errors, Help, Forms and Other Crisis Points"

How can you "improve web errors"? ("My error is better than yours" :) Who is affected by a "crisis point", the business or user?. Forms are not always a crisis point.

Recommended Title and Sub-Title

Title:
Prevent Web Errors

Sub-title:
Better Error Messages, Form Help, and Other Interaction Elements When Things Go Wrong

I'm looking forward to read your book.

09 Feb 2003 | skimble said...

I'm going to argue for "Mistakes Made Right" again. Because, as Kristoffer says above, the book is not about making mistakes well.

The title has two meanings. First, to make a mistake correctly is to intentionally screw up, the method by which contingency design is crafted in the first place. Second, to make something right is to correct it the ultimate goal.

10 Feb 2003 | coudal said...

making mistakes well

10 Feb 2003 | Steve said...

I'm still with Making Mistakes Well. It's a better attention-grabber, and I do think it captures what's going on.

But, the more I look at the subtitle, "Improving Web Errors" isn't right. Users are going to make mistakes no matter what, and the object here is dealing with those mistakes and helping users through it.

11 Feb 2003 | iain said...

making mistakes well

18 Feb 2003 | Brenda said...

what's wrong with "Contingency Design"? That title says it better than the other two options.

20 Nov 2003 | automobile insurance information said...

i vote for making mistakes well