[pheatherlite]

If we've learned anything from the security cam and baby cam scandals, then it's that convenience is king and we as a society would rather risk everything than be arsed to take few additional steps to setup/learn something to prevent such basic breaches. We (the society) don't even want to change the default password on most things.

[titzer]

People gonna be people. It's up to engineers and product designers to make things user friendly but also safe-by-default. If something needs to be configured, then provide instructions on how to configure it. Instead of pretending that it's society's fault (can't be arsed), maybe ask why the IT industry can't make instructions that are written out--explicit, fairly standard, and easy to follow--like the manual for putting together a piece of furniture. Or why the stupid device doesn't come with a randomly-generated strong password taped to it.

[yetihehe]

> fairly standard, and easy to follow--like the manual for putting together a piece of furniture.

And people still have problems following that instructions. We gave a lot of instructions, but some people just don't read them. Or can't understand and follow them. Example from this week:

Yeah, main support guy for our client is on holidays this week and only a girl from sales is available and she doesn't know why our device doesn't work, she tried resetting her phone wifi but still can't pair our zigbee smart hub connected with usb modem stick (problem: no one told her she needs to message us to actually activate sim card before installing device for end client).

Yes, you can solve this one problem, but there are many more we didn't see yet. Consumer support does not scale and you can't write tests for something you don't know will be a problem.

[titzer]

> no one told her she needs to message us

Did you have that written down somewhere? In instructions, which was my point.

Sorry for the snark, but I think "no one knows how to do anything" coupled with "Oh, the idiot didn't know to discombulate the canooter valve before inserting into the tinklerater--it's so obvious we didn't write it down" supports the point I'm making.

[yetihehe]

This was custom configuration process tailored specifically for that one client and it was written in a detailed instruction with each step tested and with screenshots. Apparently that instruction was not distributed internally at our client office. So mere existence of instructions is not often enough, you will still get very confusing calls about how to attach toaster to 36V to charge a wallet (when you did not send any toasters or wallets and client just wants your premade pizza).

[titzer]

So yes I sympathize that people didn't read the instructions, but I feel that that is partly out of habit that said instructions don't exist. We could work towards a better status quo where the configuration steps are simple, easy to follow, written out, and it's standard practice to just do them and they work.

The IT world seems to be an endless swamp of special cases and things breaking deep in the stack that require very specific, arcane skills from unwritten textbooks.

[Aachen]

> Instead of pretending that it's society's fault (can't be arsed), maybe ask why the IT industry can't make instructions that are written out

Because the competitor that doesn't have this installation "hassle"¹ will sell more units. It ends back up with society choosing to behave this way in aggregate

Society is obviously good (wouldn't want to live without it) and capitalism held up for hundreds of years now (not sure it's the best solution but with the tweaks that are in place in many well-faring countries it seems to work okay for them), but I do believe "society" does have a tendency to go for easy and cheap more than complicated and thorough when the need is not self-evident and has not been tangibly pointed out in living memory

¹ Example of hassle that HN users may not think of as exceedingly difficult: iOS setup. My dad asked me to help him set up his new tablet. I've fallen for Apple's motto and was annoyed he doesn't just do it himself. So we sit there and... lo and behold, it's good that he asked me. I forgot the details by now but things like what the heck screen time is, whether the Find My network is something to enable, whether to enable automatic updates, what to do about Siri, whether Apple Pay is something he needs to use banking apps, etc. are not things he'd have any idea of and I can give the necessary context from my IT background even if I don't have iOS myself. However, we still needed to contact their support because we both couldn't figure out how to get an Apple account set up. The continue button was disabled. I tried scrolling: nothing. Tapping the button: nothing. No error message, nothing. Turns out, the flow was only tested in portrait mode but my dad wants landscape mode easier for typing and so we never tried portrait. A part of the screen was in fact scrollable (I've used Apple devices before and my dad used the old tablet weekly, it's not like we're not familiar with their design patterns or don't know how to use a touchscreen) and revealed a required input field that would have been visible by default in portrait. Next, even setting up a standard Microsoft 365 email server in Apple Mail wasn't self-evident, iirc because he had never heard of the word Exchange and the oauth flow worked across multiple devices with again different bugs in Apple's own UIs (one needed landscape instead of portrait, another required some trick with zooming beyond intended bounds iirc)

"Hassle" is already perceived in setting up what people proclaim the most user-friendly of systems. Units that don't need it will absolutely sell better, even if that leads to a potential national energy supply risk

[yetihehe]

> We (the society) don't even want to change the default password on most things.

Like you wouldn't believe.

My most memorable case of insecure IoT devices - wifi socket was sending wifi ssid and password of the network in cleartext in every ping packet to chinese servers.

[akira2501]

> and we as a society would rather risk everything than be arsed to take few additional steps

Large manufacturers would like you to think this. It would provide them a convenient excuse for not even trying to differentiate the market along these lines.

> We (the society) don't even want to change the default password on most things.

Actually.. I just want to use my device _first_ and not go through some manufacturer controlled song and dance of dark patterns.

In my experience, if you don't pre load the user with this garbage, and then wait for them to have an actual _need_ that depends on the feature, they're FAR more compliant with following even lengthy instructions to get it done.

It's more a problem of aligned benefits and timing than anything else.

[yetihehe]

> In my experience, if you don't pre load the user with this garbage, and then wait for them to have an actual _need_ that depends on the feature, they're FAR more compliant with following even lengthy instructions to get it done.

Nope, they want to have it working out of the box like with any other manufacturer out there. If you enable functions only after user wants it, they will comment "this sh*t doesn't work" on your app store page. Then you have to respons to each comment with "what doesn't work, could you specify please?" and then after several days that user has enabled the functionality, but in the mean time several another gave such comments.

[akira2501]

> they will comment "this sh*t doesn't work" on your app store page.

What if I told you those 3% of people will say this no matter what you do. These comments and the reality of your product are entirely disconnected. We had a small userbase and added voice uploads into the app; unsurprisingly, about 3% of them are clearly impaired in some way when they leave a message. [x-files theme].

In any case, a simple "Fast / Slow Setup?" question to start is all you need, and a "Do More Setup?" after they finish one item has, again, in my experience, been entirely sufficient.

Reasonable people understand, "oh.. this needs the cloud.. and I didn't do that part yet.. so I'll go ahead and click the 'social media provider' button." If you also decide this is a good time to ask about a news letter, well, you got what you bargained for.