[117260] in Cypherpunks
Its the GUI, stupid
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (David Honig)
Mon Aug 30 14:35:07 1999
Message-Id: <3.0.5.32.19990830102907.00812a90@pop.sprynet.com>
Date: Mon, 30 Aug 1999 10:29:07 -0700
To: cypherpunks@toad.com, coderpunks@toad.com
From: David Honig <honig@sprynet.com>
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Reply-To: David Honig <honig@sprynet.com>
User interface *major* problem with crypto deployment.
But Carnegie
Mellon University researchers
have found that usability
problems are worse than
expected.
Of the 12 people who
participated in an CMU
experiment, eight never managed
to figure out how PGP 5.0
worked. Four of them accidentally
sent out unencrypted messages
that revealed confidential
information.
Even with the program's
ostensibly easy-to-use graphical
interface and even after 90
minutes in front of a PC, "only
one third of them were able to
use PGP 5.0 to correctly sign and
encrypt an email message," say
researchers Alma Whitten and
Doug Tygar, who presented a
paper on the topic.
excerpt from http://www.wired.com/news/news/business/story/21484.html
