Comment by SchemaLoad
1 day ago
In the real world the default action for a user when presented with a permissions popup is to accept it because they get asked 20 times a day, have no idea what the implications of it are and just want to get on with their day.
So software designers need to avoid asking the users to approve potentially highly dangerous things.
This is untrue. Chrome's "acceptance rates" for proceeding through its bad SSL cert warnings used to be pretty high, but with a redesign they basically flipped the numbers so most people didn't proceed to connect to the site. Similarly with cookie banners, where making it more difficult to say no (by e.g. moving a decline button to a second interaction layer) meaningfully raises acceptance rates; if users were just blindly accepting everything, then there'd be no reason to make it harder to say no. Apple's App Tracking Transparency (ATT) prompt has users overwhelmingly answering no even years after introduction (though of course opt-in is increasing). A study on permission prompts in Android found that the main factor in first-use denial rates was whether users thought the app needed the permission it was requesting or not, showing some actual comprehension of what they're being asked. Another found higher denial rates if the frequency of the prompt was on every access instead of once, rather than apathetic blanket acceptance.
Design prompts for potentially dangerous actions so refusal is easy and what's being asked is legible, and people will refuse plenty.
I think Safari does this with popups & downloads. Tiny little icons that barely appear [to change]. Can annoy me when I miss them but sometimes I figure maybe it’s for The Greater Good.