A Case Study in Using Design Principles for Secure Operating System Interfaces

The authors present a three-phase case study in the use of design principles for designing usable and secure Operating System (OS) interfaces. For the first phase, they performed a cognitive walkthrough of existing interfaces of a popular OS for creating accounts, logging into the computer, and configuring the set of services which run on the computer. After identifying potential problems, in phase 2, they designed interfaces that were meant to mitigate these problems. In the final phase, they performed a user study that examined the use of both interfaces. Participants using their interfaces had more secure behavior than those who used Windows XP interfaces.