The thing about human beings is that you can’t trust them with anything. Okay, maybe that’s a bit unkind. However, it’s a simple truth that even the most caring, careful, and diligent of us are going to make mistakes. The rest of us are going to make a lot more mistakes.
Those mistakes, in relation to web design, could be as simple as mistyping a URL, putting the wrong information in the wrong field in a sign-up form, or as bad as accidentally sending hundreds of dollars to the wrong person via PayPal. Then there’s a situation like Hawaii; we don’t have any actual screenshots of the UI that was used to scare millions with a false missile warning, but it has been recreated
by several designers—I suspect some of them were being a bit sarcastic.
So here are several basic ways to account for human error when you design your websites. I present them to you with one caveat: You can’t possibly stop everything from going wrong. If you make something idiot-proof, the Universe will make a bigger and better idiot. Good luck.