SIN 14POOR USABILITY
OVERVIEW OF THE SIN
In their landmark 1974 paper, “The Protection of Information in Computer Systems,” Jerome Saltzer and Michael Schroeder espoused a handful of important design principles; principles that over 35 years later are as valid today as they were back then. The last of these principles is “psychological acceptability,” which states:
It is essential that the human interface be designed for ease of use, so that users routinely and automatically apply the protection mechanisms correctly. Also, to the extent that the user’s mental image of his protection goals matches the mechanisms he must use, mistakes will be minimized. If he must translate his image of his protection needs into a radically different specification ...
Get 24 Deadly Sins of Software Security: Programming Flaws and How to Fix Them now with the O’Reilly learning platform.
O’Reilly members experience books, live events, courses curated by job role, and more from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers.
