People Don’t Read Similar Dialogs
See a problem there? Well, I didn’t, and neither did my testers. But the dialogs are very similar – same heading text, same buttons – the fine print is different and the Default Folder X icons are in different places, but they’re a lot alike. The first dialog pops up, and after you follow its instructions, it is automatically replaced by the second one. Because they look alike, a lot of people thought that the instructions hadn’t changed and that they were stuck, with no option but to hit the “Quit Without Authorizing” button. And send me a freakin’ email… I got lots of email.
I’ve seen this type of thing with my apps, as well.
He has an interesting solution to the problem of requesting Full Disk Access: an icon in the app’s dialog that the user can drag and drop into the System Preferences window. I’ve had issues with customers not seeing + button to manually add an app and not being able to find the desired app, e.g. because the Applications folder was sorted by date instead of by name. This avoids those problems, however I’ve also seen people get confused when asked to drag between two windows, particularly when one may be partially on top of the other. I wish macOS had an API to request Full Disk Access. The current approach is sort of like security through obscurity.
Previously: Mojave’s New Security and Privacy Protections Face Usability Challenges.
