Re: user interface/user education

On Apr 9, 2013, at 6:09 PM, Nicholas Doty <npdoty@w3.org> wrote:
> In case it's useful to have an organizing issue regarding user education, I've also created:
> 
> ISSUE-194: How should we address user education about DNT?
> http://www.w3.org/2011/tracking-protection/track/issues/194

I had shared this suggestion privately with Peter earlier regarding agenda items, but it's relevant to the broader user education issue and would be worth discussing if we have time on tomorrow's call.

From what I've heard in past conversations, there might be interest in some collaboration on resources to explain to end users what their Do Not Track preference might mean and entail. For example, some of the user interfaces proposed by browser vendors have included a "Learn More" link (a relatively common property of explaining a new setting to a user). Such a "Learn More" link could point to a resource (perhaps using shared language to provide consistency to users) explaining what online tracking is (however our spec defines it) with examples, what a Do Not Track preference means and what implications a user might expect. Similarly, sites might want a common resource or common language to point users to from their privacy pages, or when they communicate with users about DNT user-granted exceptions.

Based on experience from P3P and discussion at our April 2011 workshop, there has been support for having guidelines or common language to describe features (without such guidance, some implementers relied on the language from the spec -- itself not intended for the end user -- and used it verbatim, to widespread confusion) even when implementers resist having specific requirements on UI.

Thanks,
Nick