While reading Nik Cubrilovic’s post on how to set up secure and private Facebook browsing, I stumbled across some interesting copy and messaging.
People correctly complain that Facebook’s privacy and security options are too complex, and here’s an example of why.
Check out the boilerplate and label for Facebook’s Instant Personalization feature:
Carefully read the copy, and it’s (sort of) clear that to turn off the feature, you should uncheck the box. Of course, uncheck is not an action verb and only exists in software terms. IRL, you never uncheck a box; you just don’t check it.
Problem is that most people won’t carefully read the copy.
That would be fine, but if you arrive here with an empty checkbox (i.e. already unchecked), the label causes some confusion. The boilerplate says take an action, but if the checkbox isn’t selected and you don’t read the label, you could erroneously enable the option.
Consider the fact that this message is 100% clear without the copy, but with the copy, it wanders into legalese territory.
If I had to guess, this is an example of bolted on copy. People got in a tizzy about the feature, and Facebook hustled to make a change. It was probably easier to change the copy than to change the default option and the label, which are most likely (again, I can’t confirm), selected.
Frankly, I’ve seen worse combinations of positive/negative that create thoroughly unintuitive and confusing options. Protip: checking something is a positive mental model for enabling.
Before you write this type of user error off on stupidity, consider that people don’t want to waste time tweaking settings. So, if they end up looking at them at all, the messaging needs to be clear and easy. Compounding the problem, Facebook wants people to have less privacy, and I wonder how much time they spend making their settings usable.
Anyway, you really should check out Nik’s tips and especially pass them along to your non-technical friends and relatives.
Find the comments.
Agreed. Somebody needs to read the 37 Signals book.
http://gettingreal.37signals.com/ch09_Copywriting_is_Interface_Design.php
It’s like those confusing uncheck this box to stop receiving spam from us options.
Some of that is undoubtedly on purpose, probably written poorly and not corrected on purpose to fool the skimmers. Default settings are another way to catch people. If you read that bit about how no one changes settings, you’ll find that many people trust the software company to know the best setting. Plus, they’re afraid of unintended consequences from making a change they don’t fully understand.
Confusion is the interface.