Vancouver PD website features Quick Escape button that wipes itself from history
vpd.ca366 points by LookAtThatBacon 2 days ago
366 points by LookAtThatBacon 2 days ago
The gov.uk Design System calls this the "Exit a page quickly" pattern [1], with an associated component [2]. It can be activated by clicking the Shift key three times.
There's this nice blog [3] that explains why they chose Shift instead of other keys, and also gives a nice overview of the pattern.
[1] https://design-system.service.gov.uk/patterns/exit-a-page-qu... [2] https://design-system.service.gov.uk/components/exit-this-pa... [3] https://beeps.website/blog/2024-10-09-why-govuk-exit-this-pa...
That blog entry is a delight to read!
> As a result of advertising people being bastards,
The gov.uk Design Team are a treasure.
Seeing the level of thought that went into user experience design, research, and arguing for the _right_ page to redirect to is such a delight.
Engineering (as with so many professions) is about so much more than just shipping features as quickly as possible, and it pleases me when I see fellow engineers taking care and showing thorough consideration over the potential impact of their design decisions on people from all walks of life and circumstances.
I'm surprised that the blog doesn't mention what, to me, is the most obvious reason not use Esc — because it's conspicuous as all hell! If somebody's at risk and wants to hide what they're doing, their abuser seeing them repeatedly hit Esc just screams "I'm trying to hide something".
>It can be activated by clicking the Shift key three times.
Windows Sticky Keys entered the room.
The blog[0] explains their choices well. The brief highlights:
- Escape is simply unusable.
- Alt alone leaves the viewport and goes to menu, making further keypresses unregistered
- control is inconsistently placed on keyboards (e.g. laptops) which they don't say directly in the blog, makes extra sense if you recall it suggests not using devices the abuser might be admin/monitoring (public devices, friend devices, etc). It also is highly selected by other assistive technology products just like sticky keys.
They also recognized the issue... And tested it against JAWS and using it with on-screen keyboards
Seems they were very thorough.
0: https://beeps.website/blog/2024-10-09-why-govuk-exit-this-pa...
Note: this is the same link as in the grandparent post
Hilarious memories of hitting this when playing Return to Castle Wolfenstein.
For some reason I tap shift when thinking. Sticky Keys is my bane.
You can turn it off.
Yes but you have to remember to turn it off later, when you’re not concentrating hard.
Right, but it will get re-enabled on updates or something...it never stayed off for me.
Was this a shared memory, specifically with regard to Sticky Keys and Return to Castle Wolfenstein? I thought it was a unique problem with me and my friends lol
It was pure comedy when someone hit it mid-engagement.
And then the spamming of the communication that would follow.
Those pre-canned German voices were so great.
That only activates when pressing shift five times. Which is admittedly likely when trying to press it three times in a panic
But having a stray sticky keys window open is not too conspicuous
This is nice but how, as a user, do you learn it exists?
They do explain this:
> Interruption page
> Create a page to explain Exit this page to users.
> You must show this page after the start point of your service, but before the page where the user will see the Exit this page button for the first time.
> On longer services, you might need more than one interruption page.
[flagged]
Asylum-seekers, domestic abuse victims, sex trafficking victims, indentured servitude and modern slavery, etc. Access to guidance on government websites represents a way out of society's most dangerous situations for vulnerable people, and getting caught browsing the wrong help article can be risky. Automated intelligent surveillance isn't outside of the realms of the imagination, either, which is troubling
I suppose it's more for people trapped in abusive relationships
yeah, this is like calling 911 and ordering a pizza, the goal is for a victim of abuse to hide their intentions from their abuser
I believe this is also why 911 doesn't show up in iOS/Android call logs
That and they dont want butt dialing 911 to be easy
Quickly press the power button 5 times if you have an android phone and see what happens. This has got to be the absolutely worst idea ever and it's enabled by default!
It asks you in first-time set up if you want it. 'Yes' might be the default selected option, but it's not like opting out requires you knowing about it and going looking for it.
Do you really have faith this would be disabled by choice if you tried it on a random android phone? If they haven't already disabled it in rage after finding it on accident, I'm pretty sure that person would be terrified upon you making them aware. The first-time setup process isn't consistent across devices and never will be.
You can try to argue this down and reason about it all you want, but it's still a bad default regardless of how it's presented to the user. It's also bad design because it conflicts with similar defaults such as the shortcut to open the camera (press power button twice), silencing an incoming call (press once), etc. People may also press multiple times when the phone seems unresponsive.
You'd expect the resurgence of bad defaults to be motivated by marketing or something, but this one is just outright stupidity.
There's a part of me that is fairly convinced this was added as an afterthought after much internal whining by someone at google with a checklist insisting that android must support some easily accessible emergency feature. This was then deliberately chosen to make the feature look bad, and the users are victims of office politics.