Usability evaluation with the cognitive walkthrough
CHI '95 Conference Companion on Human Factors in Computing Systems
Communications of the ACM
Handbook of Usability Testing: How to Plan, Design, and Conduct Effective Tests
Handbook of Usability Testing: How to Plan, Design, and Conduct Effective Tests
The human-computer interaction handbook
The design and evaluation of multiple interfaces: a solution for complex software
The design and evaluation of multiple interfaces: a solution for complex software
Why Johnny can't encrypt: a usability evaluation of PGP 5.0
SSYM'99 Proceedings of the 8th conference on USENIX Security Symposium - Volume 8
A usability study and critique of two password managers
USENIX-SS'06 Proceedings of the 15th conference on USENIX Security Symposium - Volume 15
Compliance defects in public-key cryptography
SSYM'96 Proceedings of the 6th conference on USENIX Security Symposium, Focusing on Applications of Cryptography - Volume 6
Revealing hidden context: improving mental models of personal firewall users
Proceedings of the 5th Symposium on Usable Privacy and Security
Mental models of security risks
FC'07/USEC'07 Proceedings of the 11th International Conference on Financial cryptography and 1st International conference on Usable Security
IT Professional
SEC'11 Proceedings of the 20th USENIX conference on Security
PST '12 Proceedings of the 2012 Tenth Annual International Conference on Privacy, Security and Trust (PST)
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Non-use or incorrect use of security software is one major reason for privacy breaches of all scales. The problem is compounded by software, security policies, and user interfaces that are difficult to use and understand. Using widely accepted user interface analysis methods, we examine a popular free and open source disk encryption software package, and find that it is far from accessible to ordinary users. Using rigorous interface design principles, we derive several concrete changes that would make the software easier to use, and construct a new interface to test our theories. We evaluate the two interfaces through a randomized user study in a controlled laboratory setting, and determine that the new interface is significantly easier to understand and faster to use, especially for novice computer users. We observe not only measurable speed-ups of common tasks, but also improved user-reported ease of use ratings. Several of our design choices turn out to have been misguided, making some tasks more difficult in our modified interface, but fortunately our alterations are mutually independent, i.e. reverting some components to their original design does not nullify the benefit of other modifications. Our experience shows that even simple, intuitive, and logically consistent modifications to complex interfaces have dramatic positive usability effects, and can be easily applied to different pieces of security software in order to reduce the impediment to uptake by novice users.