The End of the Asterisk?

Jakob Nielsen’s Alertbox today proclaims that we we should Stop Masking Passwords. He claims the usability costs are too high, especially on mobile devices where typos are more common.

I was skeptical, but he has some great points, the most important being that the greatest security risks when you are entering a password are really electronic—someone snooping your password through an unsecure connection. Someone watching your screen can just as easily watch your keyboard to see what keys you tap. But most of the time this is irrelevant, since you are at home and not really being stalked by an over-the-shoulder snooper.

And to cover the occasional Internet kiosk scenario, he suggests providing a checkbox that will let users decide whether they want to mask their password. I like it! Virtual equivalent of cupping your hand around the keypad at an ATM.

Now that I think about it, I have recently noticed that when I type a password on my mobile phone, it briefly shows the last character I typed before replacing it with an asterisk. (Is that an Opera Mobile feature?) That seems to be a concession to some of Nielsen’s points regarding mobile password entry. But I wonder whether it really makes sense either. If it’s visible to you briefly, then it’s visible to a snooper briefly too. But what are the chances that someone can see that teeny tiny text you are taptapping on your phone anyway???

So I guess he’s convinced me! Death to the Asterisk!

posted by ted on Wednesday, Jun 24, 2009 · 7 comments

Reflections After the Flood

No, I’m not waxing apocalyptic, just thinking about some things after a minor workplace disaster this morning.

I walked in to our work area this morning and found several boxes of my stuff shoved into the middle of the floor and Frank’s desk looking like a tornado zone, with posters and papers stacked haphazardly on the floor, instead of on the desk near the wall where he usually has them.

Apparently an air conditioning unit exploded over the weekend, several floors above us. The water coursed down the inside wall of the building, flooding workspaces on several floors.

This little adventure has caused me to reflect on a couple of things:

• The time for a backup is before you need it. I have not done a systematic backup of my files in too long. Luckily, my laptop was at home with me. But if I had left it at work, it would at least have been splashed and at worst could have been soaked.
• I love my Tufte books; I should be more careful with them. My biggest concern was that the three books I own by Edward Tufte might have been ruined. Luckily, the box they were in appears to have absorbed most of the moisture. I think I’m going to place my most valued and valuable books in a more secure location…
• PDF is waterproof. One damaged item was printout of a downloaded book I purchased a while ago. Gratefully, I still have the pdf I downloaded. I’m glad I didn’t delete it after printing it out.
• The Internet is amazing. I was most concerned about salvaging printed presentation slides from a session the UIE 13 conference last fall. I would have just written Jared Spool and asked for an electronic replacement, but I had taken extensive notes in the margins. The ink had bled a little, but for the most part the pages looked OK—just wet. So I did a quick Internet search on “water damaged books.” The results were amazing.
  
  I discovered that the treatment for fully soaked books was different from wet or partially wet book, which was different than for “damp” books. (My items ranged from “damp” to “partially wet”.) I learned that in the worst cases you can freeze or even freeze dry books until a professional can be brought in to do the job right. (I was fortunately not in such dire straits, but interesting to know!) I learned that time is of the essence, but not to dry books out too quickly under high heat, or else additional damage may occur. I learned that damp bindings can cause mold problems even after the pages seemed fully recovered.
  
  In truth, I found more than I needed to know. All I had to do was interleave a paper towel every 10-20 pages or so, let that sit a while, then stand the book on its edge with the pages fanned out for final drying.
  
  But it was a confirmation of the power of the medium, that within minutes of discovering a relatively obscure and infrequent problem, I had more answers than I could use, right at my fingertips.

That’s all. Nothing too profound, just gratitude that things weren’t as bad as they could have been, appreciation for some people that I never met being generous enough to put their expertise out there for others to benefit from, and some timely reminders that there are things I can do now to prepare for disaster later.

posted by ted on Monday, May 18, 2009 · 3 comments

Bring Up a Design in the Way It Should Go

Some people talk as if you can make a product “without designing it.” That’s silly. You can’t make a product without designing it any more than you can raise a child without parenting him or her. You may parent poorly or well, but only in cases of extreme neglect could it be said that you didn’t parent at all. Same thing in making products; you either design haphazardly or deliberately, well or poorly, carefully or slothfully—but you can’t avoid Designing.

Designers are often compared to protective parents, watching over “their baby,” reluctant to take criticism of “their baby,” being proud of “their baby.” That’s all well and good—as long as you don’t spoil the child. Good design, like good parenting, requires discipline.

In parenting, one of the biggest risks is that you indulge your child’s every whim under the guise of “loving him or her.” It makes you feel good in the short term. It makes you feel liked. You may enjoy feeling like you’re a good provider because your kids “have it better than you did.” But if you overdo it, you end up with kids who can’t work for themselves, don’t respect you, and are very demanding. Not good for you, not good for them—because you won’t be there in a few years to defend and provide for them. They need to be able to stand on their own merits. The same applies to your design babies.

There is little risk that your design will start making demands on its own, but your own whims (and sometimes even good intentions) must often be curbed. Every time you add a feature, a decoration, a “little something extra”—does it really advance the design functionally or even aesthetically? Or are you “spoiling the child”? Are you adding bells and whistles in order to “keep up with the Joneses,” or are you really just building what’s needed?

Disciplined Design means knowing your audience and their needs.

It means prioritizing and setting limits (to scope, to budget, to resources).

It means saying, “No, you can’t have that right now. Maybe when you’re older.”

It means having a vision of what a product will be when it grows up, but having the patience to realize that it will take time to mature and reach that potential.

It’s saying “No” to some Good things to make room to say “Yes” to the Best things.

It’s applying tough love when your child goes astray, reining in when the design wanders off the straight and narrow path of meeting audience needs and out into the ever-shifting mists of fad and fashion.

So here’s to bringing up a design in the way it should go. Be kind and thoughtful, but also provide discipline, and maybe your “children” will bring you honor and joy, in good Biblical fashion.

posted by ted on Monday, Apr 27, 2009 · 1 comment