RE: ACTION-335 logotypes and ISSUE-96 discussion

agreed

-----Original Message-----
From: public-wsc-wg-request@w3.org [mailto:public-wsc-wg-request@w3.org] On
Behalf Of Serge Egelman
Sent: Tuesday, November 13, 2007 11:23 AM
To: Hallam-Baker, Phillip
Cc: Ian Fette; W3C WSC Public
Subject: Re: ACTION-335 logotypes and ISSUE-96 discussion


This is irrelevant for our purposes.  If we test them and find that in a 
perfect world they don't work, then this is moot.  If we test them and 
find that they're effective, then we make a recommendation, and it's out 
of our hands.  At that point the application vendors aren't in compliance.

serge

Hallam-Baker, Phillip wrote:
> I have never had the slightest difficulty selling the idea of logotypes 
> to customers. The problem is purely on the application side. The logos 
> have no value unless they are displayed.
>  
> So we risk a chicken and egg situation where the application side people 
> refuse to do anything about implementation until they are assured that 
> there will be 100% adoption by the site owners which is not going to 
> happen until there are applications to present the logos.
>  
> Someone has to make the first move, we cannot gate the scope of what we 
> will consider by requiring an assurance of total adoption by any market 
> participant.
> 
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> *From:* public-wsc-wg-request@w3.org on behalf of Ian Fette
> *Sent:* Fri 09/11/2007 4:49 PM
> *To:* W3C WSC Public
> *Subject:* ACTION-335 logotypes and ISSUE-96 discussion
> 
> This action (ACTION-335) was to provide discussion topics for ISSUE-96. 
> I only really have one point, and I will try to state it more clearly 
> than at the meeting.
> 
> To me, the effectiveness of any of the logotype proposals (or the EV 
> proposals, for that matter) depends greatly upon the adoption of these 
> technologies by sites. We can do really cool flashy things when we get 
> an EV cert, or an EV-cert with a logo, but right now the only two sites 
> I can find using an EV cert are PayPal and VeriSign. Therefore, I wonder 
> how habituated people would become in practice, if they never (or 
> rarely) saw the EV/logotype interface stuff in use.
> 
> My proposal is that any usability testing of the EV and/or logotype 
> things in the spec not only reflect how users would behave in a land 
> where everyone is using EV-certs and life is happy, but rather also test 
> a more realistic case. That is, look at what the adoption is presently 
> and/or what we can reasonably expect it to be at time of last call, and 
> do usability testing in an environment that reflects that adoption rate 
> - i.e. some percentage of sites using EV certs, some percentage also 
> using logos, and another percentage still using "normal" SSL certs. My 
> worry is that we may be thinking "EV certs will solve X,Y, and Z", but 
> that may only be the case if users are used to seeing them on the 
> majority of sites, and should that not end up being the case, we need to 
> look at the usability and benefit in that scenario as well.
> 
> I think this is what the ACTION wanted, i.e. for me to state this point 
> more explicitly. I am going to therefore assume that my work on this 
> action is complete, unless I hear otherwise.
> 
> -Ian

-- 
/*
PhD Candidate
Vice President for External Affairs, Graduate Student Assembly
Carnegie Mellon University

Legislative Concerns Chair
National Association of Graduate-Professional Students
*/

Received on Tuesday, 13 November 2007 16:52:16 UTC