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Simplicity of Important Information
By Jacob Cohen | June 27, 2007
At the risk of seeming like I don’t write a new blog post until Jeff Atwood creates a post on his Coding Horror blog that piques my interest, well, that’s exactly what happened again. Oh well.
He writes in a recent post on end user license agreements that they are all effectively legal mumbo jumbo, and often contain clauses that most people would never agree to, but end up just clicking the “Accept” button anyway because honestly, who can be bothered to read that whole thing?
I think this problem isn’t limited to EULAs. It is also found in the fine print on television commercials, product packaging, and the privacy policy of many web sites.
First, however, let’s consider the EULA. It is often lengthy, with some sections written in all capital letters, and often must be viewed within the confines of a small scrollable text area inside a fixed-size dialog box. What gives? People are fairly adept at scanning a large area of text to identify important sections (particularly if the text makes judicious use of capitalization and font styling), but by creating such a small viewport, it effectively prevents this entirely.
(I’m not trying to pick on Konfabulator specifically, but it was an installer I had handy to get a screenshot. This presentation of an EULA is typical.)
But this problem isn’t limited to EULAs. Consider the privacy policy on a web site. Typically, these are designed to inform the visitor about what sorts of information the site will collect, and what it will be used for. Like the EULA, these are often long, though they do not typically suffer from the same small viewport problem. They do, however, sometimes conceal some information to which an average visitor might object.
Take Collages.net for example. It is a photo album site that allows photographers to upload digital images, and the album can be shared with other people online. However, to view the album, you have to enter your e-mail address. This struck me as a bit odd, so I viewed their privacy policy to learn why. After some poking around, I found this clause:
In addition, we may periodically make such information (except for credit card number and expiration date, unless you consent otherwise), including aggregated information, personally identifiable information with third party businesses and affiliates for the purpose of direct mail, email marketing and telemarketing.
They do provide a way to opt-out, but unless you read the whole policy, which is about 3 or 4 pages, you would not see it.
Why are we so stuck on the idea of making information like this complex and hard to find? I much prefer programs and sites that make it simple. Plain, straightforward language that says exactly what you need to know.
Why do we always need disclaimers that mention that the software doesn’t provide warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose? When did it become the case that anything that wasn’t specifically mentioned in a disclaimer or a EULA was automatically assumed?
I think software vendors and web sites need to make an effort to simplify these lengthy documents and distill them into something that is easily intelligible to the end user, and that conveys all the information they need to know.
Topics: General |
July 20th, 2007 at 2:12 pm
Nice post, and very true, microsoft’s privacy clauses if you really look actually allow them full access to any and all information passed through their email, spaces, and msn messenger services.
So far, the only site I’ve seen to truly have a short and sweet privacy policy is http://www.isohunt.com
October 4th, 2007 at 7:30 am
Actually i like how the Legal documentation of Creative Commons Licenses go it gives you the stuff you NEED to know vs the Legal backing document if you don’t want to read it you don’t have to but that’s the awesomeness of how it is designed.