Usable Security

A number of the presentations and papers have used the term “transparent” to describe their usable design goals.  Our authors are using “transparency” to refer to making an interface or service readily understood by hiding the complexity of the underlying system.

This use of the term “transparent” is different from usage in normal English, where “transparent” is used to refer to “visibility” and the ability to look through or inside.  In one sense, our authors could really be using the term “opacity” rather than “transparency” because they are removing the ability to see inside a process or system.

The difference in usage of the term “transparency” is not just an issue of linguistic clarity.  It also points out a difference in interface or service design goals. 

The working assumption seems to be that we must hide the complexity of systems or services in order to make them usable.  I am afraid that we are ignoring the other approach, which is to make the internal workings visible by making the interfaces “transparent”, meaning this time the ability to see into.  I think we may be doing our users a disservice by hiding things that they really need to know about, or understand.

Interface designs that create wizards or simple cute icons may appear to be usable on the surface, but in the long term they prevent users from truly understanding how systems work.  In many cases, users have to learn how systems work and what the capabilities are, and by making interface too transparent (meaning opaque) we are preventing that learning.

This entry was posted on Friday, July 14, 2006 at 05:25 under General. You can leave a comment here or trackback from your own site. Use the comment feed to follow comments on this entry.