Whatever made Facebook think it would be a good idea to have 50 privacy settings with more than 170 options?
According to Gus Hosein, policy chief with the pressure group , the blame lies with a failure to think clearly about how users would respond to the system as it grew.
鈥淭hey were making that mess up as they went along,鈥� Hosein says. 鈥淭hey didn鈥檛 realise the human-computer interface (HCI) really matters.鈥�
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Rapid rewrite
The complexity of those privacy settings, compounded by company-enforced changes that overrode some user privacy choices, led to a storm of criticism from Facebook members. The company has responded with a rapid rewrite of its privacy controls.
Whether those changes will satisfy disgruntled users remains to be seen, but HCI shortcomings are not unique to Facebook. 鈥淚t鈥檚 a problem for everyone involved in online self-publishing,鈥� Anthony House, European policy manager at Google, told an Index on Censorship meeting in London last month.
Google made a major HCI blunder in February when it glued the Buzz social network onto its Gmail email service. Users who did not opt out when a Buzz introduction screen appeared found that they had become Buzz members 鈥� and that long-forgotten email contacts had become 鈥渇riends鈥�.
鈥淲e got that wrong and we learned from it,鈥� says House. 鈥淲e do need more intuitive human-computer interaction.鈥�
To manage a concept as nuanced as privacy requires a back-to-basics approach to user interfaces, says , an HCI researcher at University College London. She was surprised to find that a picture she had posted on Facebook ended up searchable in Google Images.
Obscure settings
When Blandford investigated, she found that the meaning of many privacy settings was obscure 鈥� something that HCI specialists strive to avoid. Such specialists should be part of every design team from the very start, Blandford says.
Ideally there should be a way to preview your social site as if you were a stranger, a friend, or a friend-of-a-friend 鈥� something akin to an out-of-body experience at the desktop, Blandford says. 鈥淚 want to log in as someone else and look at my online profile to see what I can see of myself.鈥�
鈥淭hat鈥檚 a brilliant idea,鈥� says Hosein. 鈥淎nd it wouldn鈥檛 be too challenging to implement, either.鈥�
