Usability: Meaning of Buttons

UOS-RZ / deterrers

The automateD nETwork pERimeter thREat pRevention System (DETERRERS) is a tool for decentral network administration. It automates workflows at the network perimeter, e.g., automatic scanning for vulnerabilities and automatic configuration of perimter firewall policies.

BSD 3-Clause "New" or "Revised" License

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Usability: Meaning of Buttons #14

Closed lkiesow closed 10 months ago

lkiesow commented 1 year ago

Provide context information for buttons. You can find out about most buttons on the landing page, but having to look up functionality there is not a great user experience. Having parts of the explanation crossed out makes it even harder.

Looking at these options, a user should immediately understand what these options do and why they might not be available.

You don’t know that triggering an “Ordinary Scan” will deactivate other options unless it is too late. Though you also wouldn’t find out about that on the about page.

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In this example, I have no idea why I cannot edit any details.

lkiesow commented 1 year ago

Some ideas for making the UI easier to understand:

Separate local and perimeter firewall actions. Don't mix them. Make them completely separate panes. That way no one assumes that e.g. adding a port under „ Host-based Firewall Policies“ will add that port in the perimeter firewall (yes, people think that will happen)
Use one button for the status (register/block). One of them is always deactivated anyway. or…
…just use a single drop-down for the perimeter firewall status. We already have the empty profile which means that all traffic is being blocked. It's weird to have that and the block options
- we happily use the empty profile since that makes things much more flexible for us. We still have our host scanned and we can quickly change the state.

tibroc commented 1 year ago

This is critical in terms of usability. People use this wrong and therefore it is broken. I would discard the firewall scripts completely. I hardly find a sesnible use case for them.

dennis531 commented 1 year ago

For the "empty" internet service profile, I suggest a different name like "Scan+Block" or "Temporary blocked".

Feel free to make other suggestions.

nwintering commented 1 year ago

I think, I would prefer something like "None" to show that no service is provided.