Comments on: Have you considered the consumer mind? http://www.dancingmango.com/blog/2007/02/22/have-you-considered-the-consumer-mind/ For more than a decade Marc has been a passionate advocate of placing the customer at the heart of business, working with clients in finance, retail, government and entertainment sectors, helping them craft compelling cross channel customer experiences. Marc champions lean and agile approaches for making customer driven innovation happen. He brings design thinking and creativity to clients, engaging across the organisation with a focus on delivery as well as ideas. He is currently writing a book on Agile Experience Design to be published this Autumn. Sun, 25 Sep 2011 23:33:07 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.9 hourly 1 By: Gino http://www.dancingmango.com/blog/2007/02/22/have-you-considered-the-consumer-mind/comment-page-1/#comment-10868 Gino Fri, 23 Feb 2007 02:07:24 +0000 http://www.dancingmango.com/blog/2007/02/22/have-you-considered-the-consumer-mind/#comment-10868 Something Cooper said in <i>Inmates</i>, about how stakeholders have this tiered model of non-computer literate people, moderately computer literate people, and highly literate people, and how wrong it is, rang in my mind just now. I think what you're saying underlines that if an application is designed for people, viz. Norman's chapter, <a href="http://www.jnd.org/dn.mss/the_design_of_future.html" rel="nofollow">How to Talk to People</a>, this shouldn't even be discussable. I think "mindfulness" is another discussion. =) Something Cooper said in Inmates, about how stakeholders have this tiered model of non-computer literate people, moderately computer literate people, and highly literate people, and how wrong it is, rang in my mind just now. I think what you’re saying underlines that if an application is designed for people, viz. Norman’s chapter, How to Talk to People, this shouldn’t even be discussable.

I think “mindfulness” is another discussion. =)

]]> By: Chris Stevenson http://www.dancingmango.com/blog/2007/02/22/have-you-considered-the-consumer-mind/comment-page-1/#comment-10829 Chris Stevenson Thu, 22 Feb 2007 18:17:28 +0000 http://www.dancingmango.com/blog/2007/02/22/have-you-considered-the-consumer-mind/#comment-10829 A little bit more information: from here: http://www.mozilla.org/quality/browser/front-end/testcases/file-handling/helper-apps.html If/when you click on an .exe file on Win32, you won't get the helper app dialog. Instead you'll immediately get saving [file picker] dialog to select a location to download. This is by design for security reasons, since clicking a link should not cause another application to run without warning the user. AFAIK, this is the case for both trunk and branch commercial builds -- maybe also for mozilla trunk/branch, but should doublecheck if you're curious. See bugs 116938 and 158623 for more details. And lots of discussion on the mozilla bug tracker here: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=158623 I think there is a case for more explanation to the user - that the file is being saved on the desktop and what they need to do to run it, as well as explaining why. A little bit more information:

from here: http://www.mozilla.org/quality/browser/front-end/testcases/file-handling/helper-apps.html

If/when you click on an .exe file on Win32, you won’t get the helper app dialog. Instead you’ll immediately get saving [file picker] dialog to select a location to download. This is by design for security reasons, since clicking a link should not cause another application to run without warning the user. AFAIK, this is the case for both trunk and branch commercial builds — maybe also for mozilla trunk/branch, but should doublecheck if you’re curious. See bugs 116938 and 158623 for more details.

And lots of discussion on the mozilla bug tracker here:
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=158623

I think there is a case for more explanation to the user – that the file is being saved on the desktop and what they need to do to run it, as well as explaining why.

]]> By: Chris Stevenson http://www.dancingmango.com/blog/2007/02/22/have-you-considered-the-consumer-mind/comment-page-1/#comment-10828 Chris Stevenson Thu, 22 Feb 2007 18:10:44 +0000 http://www.dancingmango.com/blog/2007/02/22/have-you-considered-the-consumer-mind/#comment-10828 Mike, this is an interesting example, and I tend to agree with you in general, but not in this particular case. The reason that mosilla does this is deliberately to make it harder to run an application. Basically, the prevalence of spam and trojan sites that would force a download, leading to the old dialog that *did* have a "Run" button was causing huge problems for new web users. Many first timers or inexperienced browsers are overly trustworthy, and would simply click on the Run button, then complain to their net-savvy friends that every time they went online thousands of porn sites would pop up. So the mozilla developers decided to remove this feature, forcing a much more explicit decision (and a bit more knowledge) to run the application. In this case I go with them - this forcing function is making the net a better place, at the cost of a few incidences like this. Of course a more secure OS would be better, but we are still a ways off that. It makes sense to deliberately make a hard to use design when the action can lead to harm - this is one such instance. Another example might be the old two-key approach for launching a nuclear missile, where you need to turn two keys simultaneously, but the keyholes are too far apart for a single person to reach. This forces two people to share the responsibility. Launching apps off the web is, IMHO, analagous :-) Mike, this is an interesting example, and I tend to agree with you in general, but not in this particular case.

The reason that mosilla does this is deliberately to make it harder to run an application. Basically, the prevalence of spam and trojan sites that would force a download, leading to the old dialog that *did* have a “Run” button was causing huge problems for new web users. Many first timers or inexperienced browsers are overly trustworthy, and would simply click on the Run button, then complain to their net-savvy friends that every time they went online thousands of porn sites would pop up.

So the mozilla developers decided to remove this feature, forcing a much more explicit decision (and a bit more knowledge) to run the application. In this case I go with them – this forcing function is making the net a better place, at the cost of a few incidences like this. Of course a more secure OS would be better, but we are still a ways off that.

It makes sense to deliberately make a hard to use design when the action can lead to harm – this is one such instance. Another example might be the old two-key approach for launching a nuclear missile, where you need to turn two keys simultaneously, but the keyholes are too far apart for a single person to reach. This forces two people to share the responsibility. Launching apps off the web is, IMHO, analagous :-)

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