Recently in Dealbreaker usability philosophy Category

I really like the idea of cross-posting my tweets onto Google Buzz or Facebook, but I don't want those processes to be automatic. I feel that nine times out of ten, social network interface designers set up automatic feeding between services, when really, I believe users want one-off feeding.

Here's an example where it's done right. I use Gowalla (which is like Foursquare but popular in Austin), and every time you check in, it lets you tick a box whether you want that check-in to go to Facebook or Twitter. Most of the time I don't, but there's those few places that are so tweet-worthy that I just tick off the box. This is convenient because I don't have to go to my settings, turn on feeding, check in, and then turn off feeding again.

Here's an example where it's done poorly. I have a friend who uses Buzz but won't get on Google Reader. This should be fine since you can automatically feed your Shared Items on Reader onto Buzz. I was doing this initially, but then I realized that my Buzz audience was different than my Reader audience, and I wanted to share like five things in one day, but didn't want to spam my buzzards. And so I disconnected the auto-feeding. But then every now and then I see something on Reader that I'd really love to auto-post to Buzz, especially so my friend can see it, but I can't bring myself to go through the copy-paste routine.

I think this is common. Everybody is now active on multiple social networks, but their friends aren't active on the exact same ones, and so there is an untapped potential for sharing across networks. I think I would be five times more active on facebook if I could just cross-post 10% of my tweets there.

All it takes is a slight tweak to how you design friend feeding to make it go from being something that people try-then-abandon to something that reliably connects people.

While the media does a lot of hand-wringing about the lack of privacy in our digital lives, the average consumer is increasingly becoming comfortable with letting go. There's no privacy now, inasmuch as your information isn't fully opaque. It's all a spectrum. The question isn't, "Am I exposed?" but rather, "How convenient is it for someone to snoop?"

Which is why I think it's very important for product managers to take the cross-roads of privacy and usability under a microscope. Don't just do blanket privacy controls and think you're done. Think about the nuances and fine-tune the barriers.

I present three cases where privacy is nullified for convenience. In the first case, it's designed appropriately, but in the other two cases, the design destroys the whole experience.

Take for example browser history. I do not clear my browser history, and because I use Firefox, a guest user of my computer could easily type something in the address bar that could auto-complete to something hilarious. However, the odds of that are low enough that I don't worry about it. Since the privacy shortcomings are outweighed by the convenience of having that feature, I—and probably most users—let it go.

On the other hand Google's Chrome Browser by default can not let you turn off the Frequently Visited Sites home page. Even if you set your home page to blank, any time a user opens a new tab, this alternative home page would show your eight most visited sites. And since users commonly open new tabs, this would shove my private sites in a guest user's face with a high probability. And so I had to ditch Chrome. As much as I loved nearly every other thing about Chrome, that one aspect lost me. It was much more exposure than I could tolerate.

This is all a roundabout way of saying that I wish Google asked you for your password again when searching the Web History feature. Web History remembers all the sites you surf on any computer you have the Google Toolbar installed, and then allows you to search the contents of those pages. This would be so profoundly useful to me. I'd be able to ditch my bookmark managers and I wouldn't be frustrated trying to remember some anecdote I vaguely recall a season or two ago. But having that feature always available is a can of worms. See, I'm always signed onto Google, and I'm not willing to give up the "Remember Me" feature, and so a guest user could just open any of my browsers, click on Web History and go to town. If Google just made it so searches would require a password re-entry, it would save the product for me.

The sad thing is I'm sure this is one of their top requested "features" for Web History. But if the product manager is looking at this as a "feature" then they've already failed. It's only a "feature" request if the present lack-of-it means the product is being used less. When in reality it's a "dealbreaker" because it means its not being used at all. The ideal product manager knows which label is appropriate, and by having zero dealbreakers, brings their products to a viable audience.

Theoretically, there's ways for users to mitigate problems with Web History and Chrome. Hell, if I really wanted to, I could switch to a Guest profile any time I wanted to let someone use the computer. But if that's the best response you can think of, then you're thinking like an engineer. In natural settings, a friend is at my house, I have to answer a phone call, he motions, "Hey, can I use your computer?" For a split second, my mind makes a snap comparison between having to interrupt the phone call to log off my computer, being rude by motioning "No," or taking my chances with letting him use the semi-private computing environment I've become accustomed to.