Re: Eye tracking study of Firefox EV indicators

First, I basically agree with a lot of what Ian's said - this is a common 
problem with studies. I wish they'd stopped with the eye tracking data, 
which was interesting enough on its own.

Second, we know from beta feedback and usage that the button isn't totally 
discoverable, but that's because it is new UI, and outside of this use case 
has no deeper purpose. We expect that this will be addressed in the short 
term with education and time (in fact, having just gotten back from talking 
with a lot of reporters about Firefox, I expect to see it written about 
widely). In the long term, we expect to add a lot more function to that 
button. It will be the locus for remembering or forgetting passwords and for 
clearing site specific data and setting site specific settings. It could 
also serve as an openid / srp login button.

The study's data is useful, though I obviously contend implications that 
what we have now is no better or worse than what we had before :)

Sorry to have missed you all in Oslo.

cheers,
mike

----- Original Message -----
From: public-wsc-wg-request@w3.org <public-wsc-wg-request@w3.org>
To: Rachna Dhamija <rachna.w3c@gmail.com>
Cc: public-wsc-wg@w3.org <public-wsc-wg@w3.org>
Sent: Thu May 22 16:46:19 2008
Subject: Re: Eye tracking study of Firefox EV indicators

No offense, and not to be blunt, but this study looks... less than stellar. 
:( They're testing Firefox 3 beta 1, which, IIRC, didn't even display the 
site name in the URL bar for EV sites. Then they stick in some crap 
indicator that looks so god awful and totally out of place with the Firefox 
UI it's no wonder that people look at it and say "ah ha! people look at it." 
and claim that the base Firefox 3 browser fails. Lovely.

Sure, you can drop in a dork-o-meter that is totally out of line with the 
rest of the UI and people will look at it. But is that a good idea? I still 
don't know what takeaway points I'm supposed to get out of here :( They made 
something look awful, claimed a number of people looked at it... and?


On Thu, May 22, 2008 at 4:32 PM, Rachna Dhamija <rachna.w3c@gmail.com> 
wrote:


Hi all,




Jennifer Sobey and her colleagues at Carleton University published a paper 
that our group should be aware of:

http://www.scs.carleton.ca/research/tech_reports/index.php?Abstract=tr-08-10_0010 
<http://www.scs.carleton.ca/research/tech_reports/index.php?Abstract=tr-08-10_0010&Year=2008> 
&Year=2008





They conducted an eye tracking study of people using Firefox 3 and observed 
whether people noticed EV indicators.  They conclude that the new indicators 
are ineffective because none of the participants noticed them or discovered 
the clickable regions that reveal site identity details.  The study tested 
the Firefox 3 Beta 1 release, but the results are still relevant to the 
interface in the current release.




They also experimented with a new interface for an "identity confidence 
meter", which is similar to some of the interfaces that we've discussed in 
the Web Security Score proposal.




The authors welcome our comments on the study.




Rachna