ACTION-335 logotypes and ISSUE-96 discussion

This action (ACTION-335) was to provide discussion topics for ISSUE-96. I
only really have one point, and I will try to state it more clearly than at
the meeting.

To me, the effectiveness of any of the logotype proposals (or the EV
proposals, for that matter) depends greatly upon the adoption of these
technologies by sites. We can do really cool flashy things when we get an EV
cert, or an EV-cert with a logo, but right now the only two sites I can find
using an EV cert are PayPal and VeriSign. Therefore, I wonder how habituated
people would become in practice, if they never (or rarely) saw the
EV/logotype interface stuff in use.

My proposal is that any usability testing of the EV and/or logotype things
in the spec not only reflect how users would behave in a land where everyone
is using EV-certs and life is happy, but rather also test a more realistic
case. That is, look at what the adoption is presently and/or what we can
reasonably expect it to be at time of last call, and do usability testing in
an environment that reflects that adoption rate - i.e. some percentage of
sites using EV certs, some percentage also using logos, and another
percentage still using "normal" SSL certs. My worry is that we may be
thinking "EV certs will solve X,Y, and Z", but that may only be the case if
users are used to seeing them on the majority of sites, and should that not
end up being the case, we need to look at the usability and benefit in that
scenario as well.

I think this is what the ACTION wanted, i.e. for me to state this point more
explicitly. I am going to therefore assume that my work on this action is
complete, unless I hear otherwise.

-Ian