[117271] in Cypherpunks
Re: Its the GUI, stupid
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Anonymous)
Mon Aug 30 18:41:41 1999
Date: Mon, 30 Aug 1999 23:48:43 +0200 (CEST)
Message-Id: <199908302148.XAA09619@mail.replay.com>
From: Anonymous <nobody@replay.com>
To: cypherpunks@toad.com
Reply-To: Anonymous <nobody@replay.com>
>>>>> David Honig <honig@sprynet.com> writes:
> 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"...
Doh -- of *course* "ease of use" != comprehension! The sad thing is
that the "researchers" were *surprised* by this.
With crypto -- as with many other applications -- GUIs generally serve
only to *obscure* the underlying purpose of the programme. (And in
the case of PGP, it's questionable whether the GUI even makes it any
easier to use.)
I never introduce lusers to a PGP GUI until I'm certain that they
understand the purpose of encryption and have at least a rudimentary
grasp of the bare fundamentals of public-key cryptography. People
that can't get to that point are safer without any user-controllable
encryption.
