Practice — UX Writing and Microcopy (9 questions)

A checkout flow currently shows this error whenever a card payment fails for any reason: "Payment failed. Error code: PAY_declined." Support tickets show users are confused about what to do next and frequently retry the exact same card five or six times before giving up.

1. Diagnose what's wrong with the current message using the what/why/how-to-fix structure — which parts are missing?
2. The payment can fail for at least three different underlying reasons: the card was declined by the issuing bank, the card details entered don't match the card (e.g. wrong CVV), or the card has expired. Write a specific, rewritten error message for each of the three cases.
3. Should all three rewritten messages be shown with the exact same voice and tone, or should tone shift between them? Justify your answer.
4. What's one thing the current message does that a well-designed error message should never do, independent of the wording?

This subject's error-message structure has three parts: what went wrong, why (if it helps), and how to fix it. One of these three is explicitly optional and can be skipped deliberately.

Which one — and which one must never be missing?

A user has 20 saved projects, but an overly narrow filter currently shows none of them. The screen displays: "No projects yet. Projects are where you organize tasks, files, and your team. [Create your first project]."

What's wrong with showing this specific copy here?

A new dashboard shows eight onboarding tooltips simultaneously across the screen.

Per this subject's guidance on avoiding tooltip overload, what's the actual recommended limit on simultaneously active hints?

A button hard-coded to exactly fit "Save" in English breaks once the product is localized into German.

Per this subject's text-expansion guidance, roughly how much longer does German commonly run compared to English for the same meaning?