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Even better: Let the application also say why it needs the permission: * Read access We want to analyse your tweets * Read/write Becaus
by judofyr 16y ago
Even better: Let the application also say why it needs the permission:
* Read access
We want to analyse your tweets
* Read/write
Because we want to spam your friends
- beaumartinez 16y agoWould be cool. But really, I don't think people will double-guess themselves when QuizMatic3000 doesn't give reasons for it. (An age-old UX myth: users never read dialog boxes, they just click OK.)
- jacquesm 16y agoOne fearless developer I worked with would switch the meaning of the boxes every now and then to 'train' the users not to ignore the texts based on negative feedback. +------------------------------------------------------+ | | | Are you really sure you don't want to format ? | | | | <yes> <no> | | | +------------------------------------------------------+ He'd have made a pretty good BOFH I think.
- kennethn 16y agoThat's like "training" a cyclist to use a helmet by smacking them in the head.
- jacquesm 16y agoPlenty of times later in life when I saw some cryptic message in a dialog box I suspected that he'd found new employment, but based on the high frequency of such instances it's hard to believe they're all related to him ;)
- nowarninglabel 16y agoI think we should do some A/B testing on this for efficacy.
- deno 16y agoOr you could use meaningful button labels: <format> <cancel> (or something like that) It's both intuitive and simple. Universally every HIG[1] that exists advocates that. Personally, I'd make the button red as well. [1] Human Interface Guidelines. For example, here's relevant section in KDE's HIG: http://techbase.kde.org/Projects/Usability/HIG/Messages#Confirmation_Button_Labels http://techbase.kde.org/Projects/Usability/HIG/Messages#Conf... EDIT: To clarify I didn't suspected this to be a revelation to anyone. I just wanted to put it here, since it's a very relevant audience and I was just surprised nobody have mentioned it already.
- jacquesm 16y agoYes, that's the only right way to do it. But unfortunately even the largest companies still get this sort of thing wrong with alarming regularity. Another pet peeve of mine is error messages that list multiple possible causes when clearly the underlying software must know exactly which one was the 'real' cause. So then you have to go and investigate a bunch of stuff just on the off chance that that was what caused the issue.
- jordan0day 16y agoI think IE8 did something like this, w.r.t content not served over https during an https session. It was a yes/no box worded like "Do you want to view the content only served over https?" assuming the users would generally click "yes" thinking it was the more permissive option.
- compay 16y ago> He'd have made a pretty good BOFH Or punching bag.
- jacquesm 16y agoHence the 'fearless'.
- marshray 16y agoQ: Why would an application developer want to make limiting promises? A: Because more users will trust the application and be willing to authorize it. I think this is the only correct answer. Sadly, without mechanisms in place to limit the scope of the authorization, the market is aiming for a scenario where ordinary people simply don't trust web applications. Even visiting new sites on the web for them will carry a baseline of non-specific fear.
- generalk 16y agoMost users will never analyze the "This application requests the following permissions..." screens; see: anyone that owns an Android phone.
- judofyr 16y agoThe reason is that there is no reason to analyze it. There's nothing to do on the screen, and you've already decided you want to download the app (after all, you did press the "Download" button). Maybe 80% people will still press "Allow" instantly, but at least this makes the 20% other more comfortable.
- marshray 16y agoI am not most users. Strangely, neither are most of the people I know. But we're the ones everybody looks to when they need to buy a computer, know if the web is safe, or clean up the mess when it turns out not to be. Quit it with the "most users" reasoning, unless your goal in life is to part fools from their money.
- joelhaasnoot 16y agoThe problem is lots of calls in the Android API have side-effects or can be used for a variety of reasons. Anytime you have ads for instance, you need internet access. If the app can be moved to the SD card, you need write access to that, and so on and so forth. They're little things but require opening up lots of possibilities.
- tptacek 16y agoBoth OS X and WinAPI do this now. Users (in general) hate it. You make a good point, but it's going to have little impact in the real world. People livin' in that 21st century do it better'n anybody you ever seen do it and they want their Kanye analysis now; they ain't got nothin' to lose! They rollin'! I am deadly serious.
- mikedouglas 16y agoUsers dislike it on Windows because requesting elevated privileges became so common that they rationally chose to tune out. Had Windows been designed from the start with UAC, developers would have been less cavalier in requiring administrator abilities, then maybe a UAC request might actually have meant something. Given that so many legacy games request privilege authorization, it's no wonder the users don't take it seriously. Look at the mobile platforms for an example of implementing this idea correctly. Android users, the same who are likely to detest UAC, rave about the ability to see which parts of the system an application accesses before they install it. I'm an iPhone user, and I've always appreciated its piecemeal approach to authorizing location and notification services. Zach's article is about making the message more meaningful, such that it's not just another automatic clickthrough. My guess is that users would much prefer this screen to what twitter is using now.
- roc 16y ago> "Had Windows been designed from the start with UAC, developers would have been less cavalier in requiring administrator abilities" Android and the Android Marketplace appear to contradict that theory.
- StavrosK 16y agoYour point about Android is half correct, yes I like seeing what the app needs to access, but I don't see why. Why does your calculator app need access to the internet? I know the author can just offer some bullshit excuse, but it's better than nothing...
- archangel_one 16y ago
- simias 16y agoHow do you enforce they tell the truth, and the whole truth?
- deno 16y agoopenid-abuse@twitter.com or web interface equivalent. But even better, the requested capabilities should be specific enough, so that any additional description wouldn't be necessary.
- rst 16y agoUnfortunately, a malicious app isn't likely to really say "we want to spam your friends"; it'll make up some other excuse. And, as tptacek keeps saying, only a vanishingly small fraction of users pay attention to this stuff anyway, at least until they get burned. So, if there's something to be done here, it may be in helping them to recover after they get burned --- perhaps an easy and straightforward UI for revoking OAuth tokens once granted, if the user doesn't like what the app has done with them?
- deno 16y agoI'm not sure how it works now, but the way Facebook dealt with this issue is to present IFrame with confirmation what you're posting on your wall. This of course makes using client side scripting mandatory but it—very efficiently—limits any SPAMing capabilities of a rouge application. Also, developers could request dropping this limitation but they had to go through Facebook's verification system, part of which was confirming that the app itself presents message before publishing and will only do that on the immediate UI input.
- vdm 16y agoI agree. My sister (a Normal Person) asked me why her new Android phone does this, and now she thinks she should have got an iPhone.