21 Jul 2015 by Ame Elliott

Behind-the-Scenes: Emerging Conversations from Slack

Thank you to everyone contributing to the Simply Secure Slack channel. If you’re interested in joining, email slack@simplysecure.org for an invitation. I’m especially eager to get more UX people in privacy and security involved, so spread the world. Here are some highlights from our recent Slack conversations.

Sharing the Rationale for UX Decisions

Check out Gabriel Tomescu’s The Anatomy of a Credit Card Form sharing the Wave design team’s process for arriving at an elegant, easy-to-use form. It includes a quote that spoke to me, “Given the existing mental model of paying with credit cards online, we felt the presence of one lock icon was sufficient.” Indeed.

Subtle improvements to Wave’s credit card form

Subtle improvements to Wave’s credit card form

Communicating Technical Benefits vs. User Benefits

Stewart Butterfield wrote We Don’t Sell Saddles Here, which speaks eloquently to selling benefits of horseback-riding, not saddles. A technically savvy crypto audience will happily geek out about the details of different saddles. Meanwhile everyday computer users are still puzzling, “This helps me ride a horse? But why? And how does this help?”.

Security: Cuddly and Fierce

Tunnel Bear’s brand is more about horseback-riding than saddles. Their website doesn’t lead with “VPN” to describe what it is. Instead of shields, locks, or keys they use bears. Bears!

Tunnel Bears are approachably cuddly, but also fierce

Tunnel Bears are approachably cuddly, but also fierce

Tunnel Bears are approachably cuddly, but also fierce

Look for me at SOUPS in Ottawa this week. I’ll be presenting a lightning talk on ”Security is Not Enough: Design for Security Engagement” on Thursday afternoon. I’d love to chat if you’re there.

Related

Underexposed: Building a Movement for Secure UX

Blog post by Ame Elliott on 23 Oct 2015

Last week Simply Secure hosted a pilot workshop called Underexposed. A small group came together in San Francisco to Share successes and challenges in secure user experiences Describe processes and wishes for successful collaboration between designers, developers, and security professionals Prioritize the most important topics and audiences for outreach. We also held participant-proposed breakout sessions on topics ranging from “Making a Living” to “Privacy-Preserving User Research Metrics.” You can download a pdf of photos capturing the post it notes from the sessions.

How UX Excludes or Includes

Blog post by Ame Elliott on 01 Apr 2016

Software communicates its values via its user experience (UX) by making some actions easy and others harder. For example, mobile apps can be configured to automatically opt users in to location sharing, and require people to dig through multiple layers of menus to opt out. This design choice reflects the developer's belief that it's ok to collect location data about users without asking their permission. But this is just one example; values are encoded in software in many ways beyond default settings.

Compelling Color

Blog post by Sara “Scout” Sinclair Brody on 10 Jun 2016

Great user experiences are born through the hard work of professionals with a variety of skills. As illustrated by the UX unicorn we've seen before, there's a lot that goes into what we call "design" or "usability.