That Kathryn Girl

Is Password Masking Poor Usability?

My friend Dave C over at Djinn Software forwarded me Jakob Nielsen's Alertbox for today and it got me thinking. Since I can't comment on the Alertbox directly (hate that!) I figured it was worth a blog post.

Jakob Nielsen contends that password masking is poor usability. You know when you enter your password and get the little asterisk symbols instead of being able to see what you're actually typing? That's what he means by password masking. I disagree.

Jakob Nielsen writes:

"Generally, I recommend adhering to conventions. Do what users expect, and they can concentrate their brainpower on understanding your products and offers instead of struggling with the user interface.

But password masking and Reset buttons are not something users actively seek out. Losing these features won't cause confusion, nor will their replacements: the new features will simply be clear text (in the first case)..."

Why do I disagree? Password masking might not be necessary from a security perspective but it IS what users expect. And to remove the masking and make the password visible...well I think that would raise concerns from all sorts of people questioning whether the site was secure.

I have occasionally seen sites/applications give the user the option of displaying real characters instead of asterisks. But the default is always to mask the password and let the user decide.

I can see the issue with password error on mobile devices. The iPod Touch does a good job of briefly showing you the character and then converting it to an asterisk. So you know if you've made a mistake before you hit enter.

The Alertbox seems to indicate that even on desktops users make mistakes and that leads to feeling less confident, using simple passwords, or cutting/pasting passwords from a file. If I could comment directly on the article I'd ask if that conclusion is from actual user testing or not. It seems to me that password masking is so commonplace the majority of people know exactly what it means and how to use it. 

It's an interesting Alertbox but at this point I won't be recommending any changes to password masking on sites I work on.

Found my post baby 'get back in shape' goal

I still have months to go before I'm anywhere near ready to run again. But at 6.5 months pregnant I'm already anticipating the day I can climb a flight of stairs without gasping for breath at the top. So when I read about this half marathon (happening today) I decided to get it in the calendar for next year and make it my post baby 'get back in shape' goal.

Why this race? Water stations staffed by firefighters and a chocolate aid station. Need I say more?

Hot guys and chocolate aside for a moment, I like the reason they started a women's race,

"Competitive female runners tend to feel that they are the “chase” group. An all women’s race lets them experience the rush of being first across the finish line instead of being the first woman across the finish line."

I'm nowhere near a competitive runner but in my triathlon days I once participated in a race that had the womens age groups start and finish before the mens. It was kinda neat being at the lead of the race instead of way at the back which happens when you're in the 3rd or 4th last wave to start.

Car rental companies - It's time to put customers first

I generally don't like to make broad generalizations. However, after talking to 4 car rental companies, all with the same policy that puts the company needs ahead of the customers I'm making an exception.

As part of our temporary living arrangements in the 'burbs (about an hour outside of Toronto) I've had to get used to living in car culture. Since Kirk is using our one car to head into the wilderness for a boys camping trip this weekend I decided to rent a car.

The pain point is that many rental agencies close early on Sunday, if they're open at all. I figured I could drop the car off late afternoon and put the keys in a drop box. Some of them do have this option. However, and here's the rub, they'll still charge me as if I had the car until they reopen Monday morning. WTF?

I understand it might not be profitable to stay open until 6pm on Sunday. However, just because they're not open, and therefore can't rent the car to someone else, I don't see why the customer should have to carry that cost.

Finding a way to make this drop-off policy work seems like an opportunity for a car rental place to differentiate itself. Enterprise is so focused on customer service I'm kind of surprised they haven't already done this (they were on my list of 4 that I called).

It was easy enough for me to re-jig my plans so I don't end up paying for about 14 hours of car rental I don't need. But I still find it infuriating.

Green Thumb?

With the spring weather finally arriving I was inspired to try my hand at a little gardening. Kirk's folks had given us a really nice plant arrangement but a few of the plants were getting too big for the container and the weaker plants were starting to wither.

So in an unusual fit of domesticity I repotted the plants into individual containers. You can see the result in the photo below. Just in case my thumb is nowhere near being green I gave them all a good drink of a 'miracle-gro water' mixture. Hopefully they thrive and fill our house with life and oxygen. Worse case I go to the expert and show up on my mother-in-laws doorstep with withering plants in hand.

Safe bike storage system for commuters

Saw this idea on Springwise and thought it was a pretty unique and good idea - Self-serve parking bay for bikes.

I lived for about 18 months without a car and I loved using my bike to get around town. The only hassle was the high theft rate in Toronto. If I wanted to leave my bike for any length of time, I had to ride my banged up old mountain bike even though I have a much faster (and more comfortable) racing bike.

Toronto has posts all over downtown for locking up bikes but in some areas they get completely full, which makes me think a self-serve parking lot for bikes would be useful in the high traffic areas. Even now that I have a car, I would still ride around town more often if I had somewhere secure to lock up my good bike.

I hope the self serve bike parking makes it's way across the ocean to North America!

GPS homing device could help locate my car

A couple of years ago I wrote a post about how to use the car alarm on your keychain and amplify the signal by holding the keychain under your chin. I just read about this GPS homing device that could help, without having to fire signals through the skull.

According to the freshtrend website, "When you park, just push the button and an arrow on the screen will point toward that location."

As I have a terrible sense of direction and frequently lose the car I think this is a great idea! Although I wonder how it would work in multi-level parking garages.

It might also help at home as we live downtown and rely on street parking. If we could have one on each keychain and they communicated wirelessly I might never make another frantic (ie. always last-minute) "where did you leave the car?" call to Kirk.

Of course at $79.95 a pop I'll likely just keeping wandering around shooting signals through my skull with our existing keychain alarm. But I'll be on the lookout for a knock-off!

Pix of New Orleans Weekend (and thinking about blogging again)

My last post was 4 months ago but even before that my blog was lagging with intermittent posts. I didn't consciously stop, I just didn't have much to say. And when I do have something to share I do it in 140 characters on Twitter.

The last few weeks I've had the "I should blog that" thought a few times so I think it might be time to start up again. I still find it odd to combine both marketing stuff and what I'm doing in my personal life in this one spot. I've been wondering about making this more focused but I figure the first step is just to start blogging again and see what happens.

Had a great mini vacation in New Orleans last weekend. Just uploaded some pix to flickr - http://www.flickr.com/photos/10531718@N08/tags/nola/  (Dad - you can click on any image to see it larger)

Would you pay to smash stuff?

If you're in San Diego and feeling a lot of angst you might want to check out the Smash Shack where you can...yep, you guessed it...smash some stuff. After putting on safety gear and plugging in your favorite rage-filled tune you can start smashing. (Hat tip to Springwise where I read about this)

What to smash? You can purchase various china packages or take in your own. Similar to how some restaurants handle wine you'll pay a 'corkage' fee if you take your own smashables.

I don't normally like things that create unnecessary waste or encourage gratuitous violence. However, I have had the pleasure of smashing china once and it was surprisingly fun. It was years ago when I attended a friend's Stag & Doe. Apparently it's a German tradition that everyone at the party breaks china and the couple cleans it up together, symbolic of how they'll work together throughout the marriage. And of course it's said to bring good luck to the couple.

Newly married myself (first-time around) we had shelves full of new china and glass from our own wedding festivities and nothing we really wanted to smash. So we went to the re-use center and bought a surprisingly large quantity of plates and cups for a couple of dollars.

Of course the only safety gear at the party was a wobbly sheet of plywood that separated the smashing area in the corner. Working through our $2 re-use plates was oddly enjoyable. Maybe because we're usually so careful not to break things.

Anyway, glad I did it once but probably wouldn't pay to do it again...even with the option of blasting One (Metallica) or Rusty Cage (Soundgarden) to help inspire that smashing feeling.

Bunch of photos

I've been lazy on the photo organizing front lately. I did get around to uploading a few to flickr tonight so thought I'd post links to them. The past couple of weekends have been really nice so rode about town with the camera. Also hiked in Mount Nemo on Thanksgiving weekend.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/10531718@N08/tags/lesliespit/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/10531718@N08/tags/nemo/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/10531718@N08/tags/beaches/

This might get me to cut the lawn

I have to confess that in the year we've lived in this house I haven't once cut the grass. Of course we just bought our lawn mower in the Spring. We moved last year at the end of September and since we didn't have a mower we just left the grass alone until the snow just killed it all.

Considering we leave downtown in a semi-detached house, our lawn size isn't much more than a postage stamp. So we went with the non-gas-guzzling manual push mower that is popular in these parts. I can just imagine the raised eyebrows if I start riding around on a bike slash lawn mower like this - http://www.gizmodo.com.au/gallery/bikemowers/1_large.jpg