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> I believe that people should have a basic knowledge of the tools they are using. I strongly disagree with this. Does anyone remember what connecting to Wifi

by cletus 5y ago

> I believe that people should have a basic knowledge of the tools they are using. I strongly disagree with this. Does anyone remember what connecting to Wifi looked like? I'm talking 15+ years ago. Here's how it would go: 1. Click a network 2. Choose an option from WEP, WPA, WPA-PSK, WPA2 and WPA-PSK 3. Be prompted with a either a password, a key selection or a box that generates a bunch of keys. Enter what you think the password is somewhere; 4. If it doesn't work, return to (2) and try something else. 5. If it works, you win. That was literally how it worked. And then Apple came along and just prompted you for password. Why? Because the OS can figure out the rest so why ask the user? You can argue "the user should have basic knowledge of the tools they're using". After all, if they're connecting to a WEP network, they should be aware it's not secure. But users don't care about any of that so there's no point in asking them. You're just forcing users to make decisions they don't care about, don't need to know it and aren't interested in. For what? That's what great product design and interface design is. Let's also refer to Joel Spolsky's classic "Choices" [1] where he quotes: > Every time you provide an option, you’re asking the user to make a decision. and then goes on to (correctly) say: > That means they will have to think about something and decide about it. It’s not necessarily a bad thing, but, in general, you should always try to minimize the number of decisions that people have to make. [1]: https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2000/04/12/choices/ https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2000/04/12/choices/

Jiro 5y ago
>You can argue "the user should have basic knowledge of the tools they're using". After all, if they're connecting to a WEP network, they should be aware it's not secure. >But users don't care about any of that so there's no point in asking them. You're just forcing users to make decisions they don't care about, don't need to know it and aren't interested in. For what? Because if it's not secure, and the lack of security results in someone stealing the user's password and wiping their account, the user will indeed care about it. The user does in fact care about the consequences of the thing he "doesn't care" about; he's just incapable of connecting those. It's like a user not caring about whether there's gas in his car because he knows nothing about cars. He'll care about it when the car stops running.

by cletus 5y ago

Jiro 5y ago

>You can argue "the user should have basic knowledge of the tools they're using". After all, if they're connecting to a WEP network, they should be aware it's not secure. >But users don't care about any of that so there's no point in asking them. You're just forcing users to make decisions they don't care about, don't need to know it and aren't interested in. For what? Because if it's not secure, and the lack of security results in someone stealing the user's password and wiping their account, the user will indeed care about it. The user does in fact care about the consequences of the thing he "doesn't care" about; he's just incapable of connecting those. It's like a user not caring about whether there's gas in his car because he knows nothing about cars. He'll care about it when the car stops running.