A key example in taking overly-technical copy, and making it more easy to understand

This sample is for a popup error message that appears for a web application when the server is not responsive.  

Before (And The Main Problem)

The main problem with the error prompt above is that the text is hard for a non-technical user to understand.

To a software developer, it makes sense – a Code 500 error means that the server that hosts the web application couldn’t perform as expected.

But not all users of this app will be software developers (or even tech people) – therefore, this message needed to be reworked.

After (And The Solution)

Although “500 Error” can still be seen in the title tag of the prompt, the text inside the prompt itself is much simple and to the point:

“The server isn’t responding”

But that’s not all – I also gave the user a suggestion about what they can do next.

Although there’s not much an average end-user can do about a “Code 500” error, it is much better than the original error message, which, on top of being confusing, also didn’t give the user any suggestions about what to do.