Usable Security Steps to find right balance between usability and security

1. Unit 5:
Usability design of software applications
(18CSC461J)

2. Usable Security
• Usable security is an academic field of
study that evaluates the usability of
computer security.
• Usability must be tied to security to create
a truly secure product
• Usability and security go hand in hand to
increase adoption and decrease mistakes
while interacting with the product.

3. Usable Security (1)
• Usable security reduces the cost of operations for organizations
• Usable security is more effective since the user has increased control over
security
• Usability of security reduces Internet crimes like Phishing
• For better usable security, user interfaces should be carefully designed
considering user behavior and security problems arising from it.

4. How to make security usable
• Aim for secure by default
• Take the strain
• Make it practical
• Look at workflows
• Support and empower your staff

5. Steps to find right balance between usability and security
• Focus on simplicity
• Implement biometric authentication
• Engage the users of your enterprise apps
• Provide different data access permissions for users
• Test to determine security and usability balance
• Integrate security into your culture

6. Unusable Security Costs Security
• It’s imperative that security is met at all levels:Security culture is
encouraged within organizations and a new way of thinking and doing is
established so that data can be protected.
• Security depends on usability:Security needs to motivate a positive
experience, and this is what a usable product does.

7. Impact of Security-Long term
• Increased likelihood of security breaches
• “Noise” created by habitual non-compliance makes malicious behavior
harder to detect
• Lack of appreciation of and respect for security creates a bad security
culture
• Frustration can lead to disgruntlement: intentional malicious behavior
— insider attacks, sabotage

8. Myths of Usable Security
• Myth 1: Software engineers and security experts understand usability
• Myth 2: Usability is the same as user interface design
• Myth 3: Usability is a luxury,not a necessity
• Myth 4: Making access more difficult for legitimate users also make access more
difficult for illegitimate users
• Myth 5:Usability and security conflict with each other
• Myth 6:The right process will lead to usable security

9. Cost Confusion
Cost for
authorized
users
High usability
Death
zone
Sweet
spot
Cost for unauthorized users
Low usability
Our goal is to drive this
down

10. Pain and consequences
• Financial Pain Points: Your prospects are spending too much money on their
current provider/solution/products and want to reduce their spend
• Productivity Pain Points: Your prospects are wasting too much time using their
current provider/solution/products or want to use their time more efficiently
• Process Pain Points: Your prospects want to improve internal processes, such as
assigning leads to sales reps or nurturing lower-priority leads
• Support Pain Points: Your prospects aren’t receiving the support they need at
critical stages of the customer journey or sales process

11. Effects of Pain Points on Users
• Interaction cost and cognitive load
• Time cost
• Financial cost
• Loss of trust and confidence

12. Identify and solve customer pain points
• Tailor Your Solution to Their Business
• Use the Same Language
• Emphasize the Benefits of Solving the Pain Point
• Show How Your Solution Can Relieve This Pain

13. Dialog boxes
• A dialog is an overlay that requires the user to interact with it and
designed to elicit a response from the user.
• Dialogs inform users about critical information, require users to make
decisions, or involve multiple tasks.
• Dialogs disable all app functionality when they appear, and remain on
screen until confirmed, dismissed, or a required action has been taken.

14. When to use dialog box
Use a dialog in the following cases:
• When you need to draw attention to an important piece of information.
• When you need the user to input information, especially if that
information is necessary to continue.
• When you want to show additional information without losing the context
of the parent page, for example showing larger images or videos.
• When you want to show information that is not directly related to the
parent page, for example “What’s new” dialog.

15. Types
• Alert dialog
• Simple dialog
• Confirmation dialog
• Full screen dialog

16. Toolbar
• It is the place to nest all the possible controls including buttons, labels,
icons, checkboxes, combos, etc
• A toolbar provides convenient access to frequently used commands and
controls that perform actions relevant to the current view.
• Do not separate a toolbar’s actions by another sheet of material, unless it is
transient, such as a menu or dialog.

17. Religious arguments
Capability Approach Virtue Ethics Deontology Consequentialism
What world are you
building for the end-
user? What capabilities
are you granting or
enabling?
What type of person do
you become in the
process?
What norms and
expectations are you
establishing? Are you
upholding your duties of
care?
What are the
consequences of your
decision? Do they
improve the common
good of those affected?

18. Modal dialog
• A modal dialog is a dialog that appears on top of the main content and
moves the system into a special mode requiring user interaction.
• This dialog disables the main content until the user explicitly interacts
with the modal dialog.
• They are appropriate when user’s attention needs to be directed toward
important information.

19. Disadvantages of modal dialog
• They require immediate attention.
• They interrupt the user’s workflow.
• They cause users to forget what they were doing.
• They cause the users to create and address an extra goal — to dismiss the
dialog. When
• They block the content in the background

20. Modeless Dialog boxes
• A dialog box is referred to as modeless if the user does not have to close it
in order to continue using the application that owns the dialog box.
• The Find (and the Replace) dialog box of WordPad (also the Find and the
Replace dialog boxes of most applications) is an example of a modeless
dialog box.
• If it is opened, the user does not have to close it in order to use the
application or the document in the background.

21. Characteristics
• It has a thin border
• It can be neither minimized nor maximized. This means that it is not
equipped with the Minimize or the Maximize buttons
• It is not represented on the taskbar with a button
• It must provide a way for the user to close it

22. When to use modeless dialog
• In situations where the task is not critical, a
nonmodal dialog might be appropriate.
• Nonmodal dialogs are less offensive than modal
ones because they allow users to continue their
activity and ignore them if they are irrelevant.
• Nonmodal windows are useful when users need
to quickly switch between modes in order to
access certain information.
• Google Mail’s nonmodal windows allow for
easy switching between writing and reading
information.

23. Function dialog boxes
• This dialog box allows you to select a function for use within and
expression, and specify parameters for the function.
• Fields used are:
1. Function
2. Format
3. Description
4. Result
5. Parameters

24. Mobile usability
• Mobile usability isn’t just about scaling a website or app to fit various
devices. It’s about paying mindful attention to the ways people use mobile
devices and understanding that the mobile experience is as unique as the
user.
• Mobile usability requires designers to consider elements of industrial
design and human factors; that is, design for real, physical objects.
• Uncomplicated and flawness mobile usability makes app successful in the
long run

25. Mobile usability issues
• Landscape compatibility
• Unresponsive gestures
• Unsuitable button size
• Confusing content
• Difficult navigation
• Filling data repeatedly
• Complex onboarding
• Endless scrolling and taps
• Annoying notifications

26. Usability as common courtesy
Things that diminish goodwill-
• Hiding information that I want
• Punishing me for not doing things your way
• Asking me for information that you don’t really need
• Shucking and jiving
• Putting sizzle in my way
• Your site looks amateur

27. Usability as common courtesy (1)
Things that increase goodwill-
• Know the main things that people want to do on your site and make them
obvious and easy
• Tell me what I want to know
• Save me steps where ever u can
• Put efforts into it
• Know what questions I m likely to have ,and answer them

28. Cont’d…
• Provide me with creature comforts like printer-friendly pages
• Make it easy to recover from errors
• When in doubt,apologize

29. Analytical thinking
• Analytical thinking involves the research and analysis of complex issues for
developing new ideas or finding solutions.
• Analytical thinking is the ability to tackle complicated issues by evaluating
information you’ve gathered and organized.
• Analytical thinkers can detect patterns between datasets that often lead to
creative solutions.
• They’re able to turn noisy data and information into action. As critical thinkers,
they help teams make informed decisions based on collected data and identified
goals.
• Analytical thinkers also help their team embrace new ideas and develop a growth
mindset.

30. Importance of analytical thinking
• Practical foresight
• Prioritization
• Growth mindset
decisions, both personally and professionally.
Analytical skills — a brief introduction

31. What Analytical Thinking is NOT About
• Overcomplication
• Stagnation
• Making assumptions
emerged:

32. Examples and discussion
• A good stock analyst can analyse a company's stock by reviewing their annual reports.
For this, you will need to compare and examine their 10-15 years of performance and
financial data. After assessing the information, you should be able to make accurate
future projections about financial performance based on past records.
• Here are some fields for which information and research analysis skills are necessary.
1. Policy analysis
2. Business analysis
3. Credit and cost analysis
4. Financial analysis
5. Return on Investment (ROI)

33. Contd…..
• Suggesting a solution for a website's underperforming landing page requires
critical thinking in various aspects. These include assessing the page's historical
data, layout, keywords and backlinks.
• With critical analysis, you will be able to organise the data, breakages or
distortions appearing in the patterns found.
• Your critical thinking skills allow you to verify that your assessment is accurate
and unbiased to produce the best possible result.
• After this, you can create an action plan that improves the page's visibility and
accessibility to bring sales and traffic.

34. Contd….
• A data scientist working with an e-commerce company scans large data sets
before they draw some evidence. This evidence can be about the number of users
of a particular product, a service, travel destination or other items marketed by
the company.
• If paying attention to details, the data specialist can break up the user data to
country, state, region and city locations. This also includes age groups and
gender.
• Such large data studies can present the data scientist with a backdrop to make
future projections. They can even use it to target online advertising for a selected
audience.

35. Usability of games
• In games, usability is about delivering a better and deeper experience with less
unnecessary interruptions or challenges that have not been designed by the
developers.
• The delicacy of the user experience and heavy competition actually make
usability more important in games than it is in other software.
• Usability is important when making a game as easy and intuitive to play as
possible.
• Good examples of complex games made easy are World of Warcraft and Xbox
Live games.

36. Example
A tennis game-
• Commercially successful tennis games have varied the pace on both of these dimensions.
• Therefore, before we know which aspect of pace to focus on, we need to understand the
vision of the game designer.
• If the vision is a frenetic, high-action packed game (as opposed to a simulation), then we may
focus on usability and gameplay issues that help speed up the action.
• Can users get right in and start playing?
• Do users really want to see a replay after every point?
• Do users want to see animations of their players walking back and forth between the sides of
the court (as in real tennis)?

37. Colors in UI design
• Color can set the basic mood, tone, concept, and connotation for a brand or
product.
• The right color selection always supports better information readability.
• It can also serve to increase the strength of elements such as calls-to-action.
• It can enhance customer navigation capabilities.
• It can fulfill subconscious aesthetic user needs.
• Lastly, it can stimulate intuitive interactions.

38. UI Colors Fundamentals
• Choose the Right Color in the Proper Pattern
• Brand Personality Matched with the Right Color
• Colors Balance
• Combinations and Complimentary Colors
• Saturation Overload Kills Color Vibrancy
• Define Interactive Colors

39. Habits wrapup
• Go to user testing sessions
• Talk
• Test the words on your interface
• Step away from the computer
• Get the basics right first
• Always ask ‘is this design accessible?’
• Remember content over design

40. Contd….
• Follow your process
• The user opinion is more important than yours
• Don’t aim for simplicity
• Always remember good design needs to do several things
• Find out the context of why something is being designed
• Design because your users want it not because your competitors do it
• Slow down