The GUIs of Insecurity

It’s not that uncommon to anthropomorphize software by giving it a humanlike demeanor. An easy-to-use app might be said to be ‘friendly’, while less well-designed ones may be called ‘unstable’, ‘unforgiving’ or ‘unresponsive’. Those negative personality traits are probably far more numerous than the positive ones, and I’m sure that says nothing good about our industry.

But there’s one personality disorder that doesn’t get called out much for software, and it’s getting more grating all the time: insecurity.

One of Windows 95’s less celebrated innovations was the outlet it gave for the less self-assured application to put its personality disorders permanently on display. I refer of course to the system tray, that veritable dumping ground of iconic anxiety, whereby any random piece of software could stake claim to a square centimeter of prime real estate at the bottom-right of your screen.

For some reason, developers must have felt that if everybody else’s app had tattooed itself onto the poor users’ screens, then by gosh theirs should too! Never mind that the only tenuous excuse they could think of for putting a control there was to tweak some random parameter of some random driver for some random piece of hardware that never really needed tweaking in the first place. Dammit, somebody wrote that driver, and he wasn’t about to let you forget it!

And everybody was doing it. Even the folks who really should have known better. If I told you that Apple gave Quicktime a system tray icon, do you think you could imagine any circumstance in which you’d actually want to use it?

But it got worse: as time went on, it wasn’t just the apps you’d installed that were awkwardly trying to crash your office lunch group: PC vendors had resorted to shoveling mountains of pre-installed crapware on new machines to make up for in kickbacks what they were losing out on from increased price competition. And these ones really had a complex.

Microsoft’s solution? Indulge them further. The insecure application running under Windows XP (or was it 2000?) no longer had to content itself with quietly whimpering in the corner hoping that you’d notice it: a new notifications API gave its system tray icons a fully-fledged bark!

Any application, cognizant that its nondescript splodge of color in the system tray wasn’t providing the best possible utility to end users, now had a chance to prove just how useful it could be by spontaneously throwing obsequious messages in your face in the vain hopes that you’d finally pat its back and call it a good dog.

Leading that charge was Microsoft itself:

That document that you wanted sending to the printer? The one that you hit the ‘Print’ button in the ‘Print’ dialog for? I’ve gone and sent it! Just like you wanted! You might have forgotten which printer you told me to send it to, so here’s a reminder. Aren’t I useful? I can even tell you the precise second at which I sent it! And don’t think I’ve forgotten what year it is!

And though it looks like they’re starting to learn that constant bombardment of unnecessary information doesn’t make for a good experience…

Credit: Windows Dev Center - Desktop, Notifications (MSDN)

 …it turns out they haven’t learned at all.

Yes, that’s right. No superfluous information here. Not now that we’ve truncated the filename. (ibid.)

But here’s what gets my goat…

The explosion of mobile apps over the last (wow, has it been that long?) seven years has, predictably, given rise to a whole new pandemic of software anxiety disorders, and with notifications being an even more prominent feature for always-on mobile apps than they ever were for desktop apps, the pressure on many a young app to prove its worth through impromptu outbursts of unsolicited information is more than most can bear.

But being a trend doesn’t make it trendy. You’d think that a confident, self-assured, successful tech company would appreciate that, right? If all its friends were jumping off a bridge, surely there’s one company you can rely on to… oh, no, wait. OSX Mavericks just jumped on the bandwagon big time.

(credit)

It seems to be a rule that the earliest works of any new medium tend to go overboard with exploiting its new capabilities. Early color television shows were insanely oversaturated; early 3D movies all felt the need to throw a knife in your face; subtlety and moderation come later, after people have tired of the gimmicks.

So when a company renowned for its commitment to minimalism in design (occasionally excessively so, I argue) jumps aboard the train of needless distractions, it feels like the tech world just took a step back.

To shame just one of many offenders, have you used iTunes on OSX lately? Whereas traditionally you’d start a playlist playing in the background and get on with whatever you’re doing, the current version assumes you’d really want to be pestered each time the song changes. Hey! I know you’re doing something else, but I’m still here! Don’t forget me!

I can imagine the thinking at Cupertino:

Oh, hi! Sorry, I hadn’t noticed you there. Oh, is that what I’m listening to? Like, that is soooo cool. You’re pretty smart, huh? Cute too! Hey, some girlfriends and I are throwing this little party at my place this evening. You should totally come!

Oh, ew, it’s that creepy music player. Yeah, the one that’s always trying to tell me stuff. Like, hello, of course I know what the damn song is, I do have a pair of ears. Quick, come this way… oh, too late, I think he’s seen us.

As app developers, we can do better than this. Trying to throw ourselves in users’ faces is a very poor substitute for them wanting to peer into our world, and the more we do it, the more we come across as shallow attention-seekers.

Have confidence that a great app will be recognized as a great app, and let’s spend our time giving it a great reason to exist, rather than waste time exploiting new gimmicks to simply remind users that it does exist.