Simon Willison’s Weblog

E-Trade financial tried using a RSA fob as a second factor of authentication, but as of their 11/07/06 financial report their fraud losses continue to increase. That said, they considered this program a success because users indicated they feel safer and are more likely to provide assets.

— Usable Security

# 20th July 2007, 10:31 am / usablesecurity, etrade, rsa, rsafob, security, usability, securitytheatre

On any given Web page, users will either click something that appears to take them closer to the fulfillment of their goal, or click the Back button on their Web browser.

— Mark Hurst

# 7th March 2007, 1:58 pm / viawilson, mark-hurst, usability

You need to lay out the user interface components visually, by hand, with total control over where they go. Automated LayoutManagers don't cut it. A corollary of this is that you can't move a UI layout from one platform to another and have the computer make everything fit. Computers don't lay out interfaces by themselves any better than they can translate French to English by themselves.

— Jens Alfke

# 22nd January 2007, 9:41 pm / usability

The way you make users understand your program model is with metaphors. When you make things look, feel, and most importantly, behave like things in the real world, users are more likely to figure out how to use the program, and the app will be easier to use. When you try to combine two very dramatically different real-world items (email and appointments) into the same kind of thing in the user interface, usability suffers because there’s no longer a real-world metaphor that applies.

— Joel Spolsky

# 22nd January 2007, 9:26 pm / usability, metaphors, joel-spolsky