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Popup Study Confirms Most Users Are Idiots
danieltdp writes "Testing students at a University, psychologists made many of them click on a dialog box that in effect said: 'You are about to install some malware. Malware is bad. By clicking yes you are failing the Windows Darwin Test.' Nearly half of them said all they cared about was getting rid of these dialogs."
Quit bugging me. Much more work needs to be done to eliminate "Are you sure?" requests. Working undo is always better than asking the user and making him regret the answer seconds later.
Be that as it may, to call a user an "idiot" because he does not know the appropriate style for an error dialog box, or having seen an odd style, does not associate that with malware, but prefers to continue on task if possible, shows how arrogant the author of the summary is.
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This was not surprising and I don't place all the blame on the users.
There's a similar situation with semi experienced administrators. They may configure logging and monitoring on a system. Being security paranoid, they set the log level fairly low so they end up getting lots of alerts.
Somewhere along the line, however, the administrator stops paying as much attention. Maybe a CPU alert hits 100% every night. Then one day someone in Finance runs a half-assed join across a gateway and brings down a DB. The admin gets the alert but has gotten so used to them that it was ignored. This is worse than if he'd never gotten the alert at all.
The alerts that OSes put up (Vista, for example) and the host of browser and AV and IDE warnings get useless after a while. The system should do this transparently and not rely on the user to be the MAC layer.
I don't think this says as much about the users as it does the usability of our computers.
Computers are commodity items now, the days where nerds interested in technical details were the primary demographic are long gone. People just want to do their job and move on with life, they don't care about memory registers or malware they just want to not be interrupted.
It really illustrates how dialog boxes as a warning system are a flawed mechanic, we got this fancy computer with a fancy operating system, why can't it figure out the right thing to do when an application tries to access memory it's not supposed to?
Guess my point is if we put as much effort into error handling and/or malware detection as we do our whiz-bang graphics, it might not even be a problem anymore.
This was my thought too. Study participants were asked to give their opinion on a web site. If they close the offending window, they'd be unable to give their opinion on that website. If they just clicked through, they stand a chance of getting to the web site, and whatever happens to that terminal is none of their business. So these 'idiot' users were just following instructions.
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The attitude that users who do something wrong are idiots is a large part of why computers, operating systems and applications are generally pretty shit. They're made by and for geeks, not normal people. If 1% of your users do the wrong thing they may well be idiots. If 50% of your users are doing the wrong thing, you are the idiot for designing your software so badly half the population can't use it.
(I mean "you" in the general sense, not the parent specifically)
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It isn't just Windows either. Apps in Gnome, KDE and OpenOffice also open up stupid dialogs.
It is unreasonable to consider training users to be driven by popups. What would make more sense is for programmers to design their pop up use better so that it is more meaningful for the user.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
I don't really get why clicking OK on something that vaguely looks like a system error is a problem. If it is a script running inside a web browser, the script cannot do anything that it wouldn't be able to do without the script. If it is already a process running inside the OS, it means that you are already in trouble because it could also erase files or install programs without you clicking OK.
It would be more beneficial to malware if they could make a REAL Windows dialog ("Install new software, Allow?") look like a harmless message ("Print job finished."), but that would be pretty tough to do.
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Education is definitely not enough because people just don't care. They want to do what they want to do and the computer should magically understand that and play along. There's little respect for the complexity of general purpose computers and any possible learning curve needed to use them properly.
My wife has occasionally complained that her computer was acting "strange". After hearing the symptoms I've often asked, "Did any messages appear?". "Yes." "Well what did it say?" "I don't know. I just clicked OK." She simply doesn't care enough to deal with an issue when she's trying to browse a web site or send an email.
My favorite was the time she complained my laptop must be broken because it turned itself off. I got nervous thinking it was broken. I asked if a message had popped up before it turned off. She said no, then thought about it and remembered something popped up a few minutes earlier. She couldn't remember what it said. I told her it said to plug it in or it would turn itself off. Her response: "Oops".
Developers: We can use your help.
One thing worth noting is whether the students were using their own computers or computers on loan from the department. It's worth noting because most people care what happens to their own personal systems (because they're the ones who will be stuck fixing them) but care less if a school computer is infected for instance.
I'm not sure if this makes them idiots or just uncaring, either way it could be relevant.
It's true no man is an island, but if you take a bunch of dead guys and tie 'em together, they make a good raft.
Working in support, I have seen so many times where if an unfamiliar dialog box pops up, people either click on the option they are used to clicking on, or call support without even reading the message on the dialog box. It is like they are unable to physically see the contents of the dialog anymore, it has been beaten out of them. Often all I have to do is make them read me the dialog over the phone, which makes them process the info mentally, and they know which button they need to press then, having actually read and comprehended what was asked.
It is a very interesting problem, I think the solution is to make the buttons themselves say what they do, rather than clicking Ok or Cancel, have the button say "Exit crashed program", or "Install new program" or what have you. Always being OK or Cancel conditions people to just blindly click.
I see a lot of people jumping to conclusions about how this is the fault of programmers for using the dialog box too much, etc, etc, etc. I call BS. If you write software for people who are computer illiterate (which happens a lot in my field. i write software for veterinarians), they'll click on anything and do everything, no matter the consequences. A simple "undo" isn't enough. They need to understand what they just did. If a popup don't pop up and say "you're about to delete something" they won't even know they deleted it until its too late (closing program, etc). You can't keep an infinite list of "undos" either. So, you're left to assume one of two things. 1) The person has read instructions, understands what they're doing, and understands they're responsible for breaking it OR 2) They haven't read any instructions, will click on what they think makes sense and when they break it, they call support, bitch and moan, taking up valuable time. Maybe in a bigger company, thats acceptable, however, *I* do both the programming AND support as we're a company of about 5 people. I can't be dealing with people who are idiots. I challenge anyone to make something thats completely foolproof without popups AND thats still aesthetically pleasing to look at AND easy to use.
Maybe people should just realize they're using delicate instruments and should treat them as such. These aren't toys, but systems that cost hundreds, sometimes thousands of dollars to build. Its not the programmers' fault. Its the user's. If the user refuses to educate himself to not be a fool, there's really no way to try and make something foolproof.
Computers are not for everybody!
Amen, brother.
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If the tools aren't working well for people then the design of the tool is wrong.
If you build a ATM (cash dispenser) that spits out the money before it returns the card then you'll find that a not insignificant number of people leave the machine without retrieving their card. In their brains the task they are doing (getting money) is complete so they walk away.
Thus cash machines return the card first and then give you your money.
You have to design things to work the way real people work. Calling people idiots is just a cop out.
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That kind of personality quirk is not necessarily a sign of genetic stupidity. It's just a sign of extreme disinterest.
There are people who treat their cars more or less the same way: they are not the least bit interested in what is going on, literally, "under the hood". Warning lights? Pffff. Unless it stops the car, interrupting their life, they don't give a crap.
Car dealers love them.
And frankly, while such people can be annoying, I find them infinitely preferable to type that treats people like inanimate objects.
Microsoft has trained people to click "OK", "Open", "Run", "Install", "Continue", or whatever button (wherever it is) that gets you past the idiot box.
Apple had until recently avoided this mistake. NOT (as some people have said) by making the buttons more meaningful, but by simply NOT trying to use warning dialogs in place of good design.
For example, Mac OS doesn't ask you if you want to move a file to the trash, and it doesn't ask you if you want to empty the trash, because these are common actions, and the dialog box becomes something you reflexively accept.
Recently, as I say, Apple has started to deviate from the path of virtue. I've caught my Mac in bed with promiscuous dialogs on many occasions.
But by comparison with Windows (particularly Vista)... my Mac's still pretty much a dialog virgin. Really.
The "read" version is definitely more common, though, for some reason.
Most computers spend more time reading than writing. I know this is insanely simple, but that is why you see more read errors.
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"Education is definitely not enough because people just don't care. They want to do what they want to do and the computer should magically understand that and play along. There's little respect for the complexity of general purpose computers and any possible learning curve needed to use them properly."
There is absolutely nothing wrong with this expectation.
Until you have internalized this, you won't be able to design great software.
Also one must consider the situation. The students were placed in front of a screen and given a task. If it were me I wouldn't be to concerned about error messages if I could just click them away, finish the job and collect my $5 or whatever. If it was my own PC, or one I used every day for work, I would indeed take much more care. But a machine used by many people is probably going to get fucked up in very short order regardless of what I personally do, so why bother.
Mod parent up - I couldn't agree more. Users are not idiots. Users just don't care about reading dialog boxes because a lot of the time the message isn't useful or helpful.
Here's a suggestion for everyone. Whenever you display an error message, don't just display the error message. The user (normally) doesn't particularly care what went wrong. They just want to know how to fix it.
Eg, I was trying to buy an AudioBook on iTunes the other day, when it said to me "Users in Australia cannot purchase tracks on the UK site". Now it didn't tell me "well, go to the Australian site, and here's a link to go to it" or say "would you like to go to the Australian site?". It just gave me a dumb error message. It took me ten minutes to find the link to the Australian site (scroll down to the bottom of the front page, dur. Seems so obvious now).
Dammit, be helpful to your users. Don't just display the error message. Display what to do about it. Even "please try again later" is better than nothing.