Excerpts from mail.nonpersonal: 11-Dec-95 Re: Usability of Cryptograp.. Bryce@taussky.cs.colorad (6455)
I challenge you, however, to go beyond pointing this problem out and start suggesting some approaches to alleviating it.
Actually, this was something I was strongly considering doing as a major new venture *until* Einar Stefferud introduced me to Lee Stein and we realized that you could do payments without any cryptography at all. That, as you have seen, turned into a fairly major distraction. I'd still like to get back to usable crypto some day, however. There are about a gazillion *easy* ways to make crypto software more usable. PGP is a *great* starting point in this regard, as almost any user interface change is an improvement. :-) What's less obvious, and most critical, is how to map the complexities of key management onto a usable interface. What few ideas I have in this regard are, well, ones I'd really like to productize some day, which makes me a bit reluctant to suggest them publicly at this point..... I guess the one hint I'll drop is that the art of designing good user interfaces usually comes down to choosing the right abstractions or metaphors. -------- Nathaniel Borenstein <nsb@fv.com> (FAQ & PGP key: nsb+faq@nsb.fv.com) Chief Scientist, First Virtual Holdings VIRTUAL YELLOW RIBBON==> http://www.netresponse.com/zldf