> It’s intended to be a safety tool. A way for people in unstable, potentially violent, domestic situations to quickly leave the page.
An upsetting but nonetheless incredibly interesting abnormal UX problem to solve. I appreciate seeing this much thought being put into things like this.
They're pretty forthcoming for what I assume to be an government agency.
I wonder why the gov.uk team are getting so much publicity(?) In the last few years.
As much as I love the aesthetic, I'm developing a fear that they'll soon spin off into a startup with some kind of paid model, and that government websites will regress.
Irrational fear, I know, but I cant shake off the startup-vibes I'm getting when I read such posts about what is essentially a public service.
fwiw this isn't an official gov.uk blog post. I mistook it for one at first too... I only double checked once I stumbled over the "advertising people being bastards" line.
> As much as I love the aesthetic, I'm developing a fear that they'll soon spin off into a startup with some kind of paid model, and that government websites will regress.
gov.uk got started, in part, because the 2009 financial meltdown left a lot of good startup designers and engineers with not enough to do (and made civil service jobs more attractive for a bit!)
Compared to many other countries, UK has a computer science culture that's very open about how technology is used in every day lives, and it invites public participation in new tech. This shows a lot in the government as well as its services like BBC and NHS, and the academia.
It's a very broad topic to cover so I'll be terse with evidence/examples only. UK government provides a lot of open data and APIs for the country [0], [1]. They are free and pretty much not throttled. They have a license [2] for a lot of this data which is formal but nearly as free as John Carmack's legendary hacker-friendly "have fun" license [3]. There is also a lot of historical Ordnance Survey data and historical legislation data from the National Archives. And of course, you can see the openness in how they have built gov.uk, as blog articles appear on HN about it quite often.
There is also a lot of government infrastructure provided to local governments, such as gov.uk Notify [4] or a freely available NHS website CMS (which is why many NHS websites work the same). There is a guide [5] mostly intended for government services but free for others to use on building accessible, secure and quite good-looking websites.
Most other governments I lived under are either technically behind UK or they have very advanced tech capabilities in certain branches of the government only (such as the armed forces) but keep it out of the public eye. Ultimately, I think it is the culture of welcoming everyone's participation in technology that makes UK gov so forthcoming and open with their tech and data. Doing this is seen as kind and civilised, which is how governments want to be seen. Of course, there are still areas of improvement in how UK gov provides data, as there always are in everything.
Finally, I should mention you can find many BBC technology outreach programmes from the early days of home computing. They are all over YouTube if you search for "BCC home computing". There was and continues to be a lot of techno-optimism in the country. It is one of the admittedly not many things that persist from the pre-austerity times.
> This shows a lot in the government as well as its services like BBC and NHS, and the academia
Salaries play a significant role.
Unlike a lot of other countries, private sector salaries for SWEs suck in much of the UK, and gov.uk (in reality part of the Civil Service), GCHQ+MoD, and BBC can pay fairly competitively and give a fairly decent pension compared to private sector gigs.
That said, I'd disagree with NHS IT - it's almost entirely outsourced to regional MSPs who suck (and I say this as a former vendor who's helped sell products those guys use in NHS environments)
This isn't really an example of UK culture. 15 years ago, UK gov sites were as bad as everywhere else. Some of the small number of good things that I can credit the Cameron government were a few of these changes, including the establishment of the Government Digital Service and changing "IT" education from learning how to use Word, to actually teaching all kids coding, starting in primary school.
It is culture. The government doesn’t just provide these APIs, people use them. End even if you compare Harvard’s CS50 vs CS courses in the UK, you will see that it’s a lot more oriented around computing in every day life. The BBC home computing shows and their success itself is a bit of a unique phenomenon in the UK. Many other countries had these shows but they never went mainstream, most only attracted viewership of enthusiasts. There is a strong cultural element.
They’ve done this since the head of the Cabinet Office around 2010 set up a team to improve digital government services. There’s a lot of information published as to their methodologies and their teams present technical topics at conferences.
It’s likely part of their efforts to be more transparent, work with other governments and better support departments without having to be in 50 places at once. It’ll also help with recruitment.
This is all thanks to the GDS, which was formed in 2011 specifically to bring that kind of startup vibe to government. It's even based in Shoreditch, with the startups. A lot of alumni from GDS have gone on to consult with other governments, many of which have launched similar departments. The US equivalent is 18F, which involved collaboration with GDS.
I’m curious about this history of this. What page are people on that might lead to domestic abuse?
What do they use frequently enough that they would learn about this exit functionality rather than just clicking a bookmark bar, closing the tab, or just switching the tab?
This seems like such a contrived scenario with a solution that only works for gov uk sites. Why not teach users how to switch or close tabs with keyboard shortcuts?
> This seems like such a contrived scenario with a solution that only works for gov uk sites. Why not teach users how to switch or close tabs with keyboard shortcuts?
+1. "Close tab" is more robust, well-supported and well-known.
It seems more likely a user will load an inoccuous page as a decoy, than learn triple-shift is a quick exit.
Still, interesting read, to hear the reasoning. Would like to see empirical evidence/user testing.
I understand the happy case. When it works, great.
My critiques were on the sad cases:
* Presses <Ctrl><Ctrl><Ctrl>. Wait why isnt this working? Too late.
* Presses <Shift><Shift><Shift> on another sensitive site that doesn't implement this. Too late.
* Presses <Shift><Shift><Shift> on a poorly supported browser, or after the functionality is removed, or after it conflicts with OS-level (it might not today, but who knows about future OS updates)
Absolutely. This would solve the above problems, plus any problems involving JavaScript bugs that would render the whole thing inactive. Just a shortcut to go to the root of the site seems appropriate. Or maybe sites could configure themselves for a "safe site" equivalent if their whole content is a risk.
Either the abuser walked in while the person was still on the page with the big red button or not. It is not faster to press the big red button or shift 3 times than it is to close a tab.
Surely Ctrl+W (with a 2nd decoy tab already there and at BBC Weather) is 10x faster than finding and clicking a button on the page you're reading?
EDIT: another issue with the Exit This Page as implemented on eg https://www.camden.gov.uk/planning-to-leave-an-abuser - if you open it in a private browsing session, and click it, it sends you to Google, but of course there the first thing you get is the massive cookies pop-up. So wouldn't that be a bit of a red flag to whoever just walked in? :/
Or, perhaps even more likely, abuser stealthily enters the room and silently observes the victim to try to extract more damning information before admonishing (or rather, attacking) them.
It wouldn't be the desktop, would it? Wouldn't it be an 'empty' browser window? Still just as suspicious, of course, but I wonder if some/all browsers do something special in that case—e.g. default to the home page. They certainly could, as could a plugin.
Chrome closes the window on the last tab. It's splitting hairs, however. As you said, it's still raises suspicion which, to a person in a domestic violence situation, is not what they want.
I think the point is learning to have two tabs open, one incognito, will work everywhere for all resources, whereas this bespoke interaction needs to be memorised just for this websites.
> I think the point is learning to have two tabs open, one incognito, will work everywhere for all resources, whereas this bespoke interaction needs to be memorised just for this websites.
No, it’s telling people how they should behave, as you can see. It makes no attempt to step into the shoes of the user.
I would really like to know whether this feature gets any (non-accidental) use. It's certainly an important problem to solve, and I can see the technical merit in the solution proposed. What I'm left wondering is how this solution is most effectively communicated to the people who need to know about it, such that they're able to make use of it correctly in the critical moments when they need to use it. For obvious reasons there are probably no good statistics on this, but I wonder what the user research was like.
Another example: There’s a page in the iOS settings where you can remove people from your family group and change your password (or do other things you might do if someone was after you). It has a “quick exit” button that kicks you back to the Home Screen, but also completely kills the Settings app so said person wouldn’t know you were on that page if they yoinked your phone.
If I'm looking at this right it's around 413 uses in a month in this particular web page. I don't know if they somehow distinguish actual use versus "trying it out". I think it's great these things are considered but I'm a bit skeptical they actually increase physical safety of people at risk. Maybe these buttons increase perceived safety, which is a good thing?
> What page are people on that might lead to domestic abuse?
I assume there's a .gov.uk page somewhere that lists resources for people who are in abusive relationships. I imagine if an abusive partner walked in to find you reading that, that might set them off.
Sorta, kinda, maybe? Even the one shipped with Debian/Ubuntu?
Firefox gave me plenty of scars over the years. CTRL-Q and CTRL-W are just two; another's the fear of the browser randomly going "updates have been installed, you're not allowed to do anything until you restart; shame about that unsaved work you had on the page we just blanked" shit that used to fly on Ubuntu.
(Maybe still does? I browse from Windows nowadays.)
I'm mildly surprised because it's been adopted fairly universally for multi-document / multi-tab apps. E.g. most editors with tabs will also use it to close the current document.
Imagine your abuser “lets you” use the computer for one hour a day. They monitor your browser history. They read your texts, your social media DMs, and browse your search history. They often watch you browsing, save going to the fridge to get a beer or to go to the bathroom. These are the moment where you think about trying to find help. It’s all you think about really: how to get out.
How likely are you to know keyboard shortcuts?
As a UX designer, would you not want to make a big safe UX button that you need no prior training or experience of, that you can trust to help you get out of a difficult situation.
Footsteps. Oh shit. They’re coming back. Is it Ctrl-W? Or Ctrl-V? Oh fuck, he’s nearly in the room. Quick, where’s the tiny little cross to close the window… oh, wait, click that exit page button, or just quickly hit shift a bunch of times. “Oh yes, I was just looking at the weather for tomorrow. I was thinking about whether to put some washing out on the line…”
This discussion is about the current practice where a more widely used Ctrl+W is hard to remember, but somehow a niche 3xShift isn't, not a potential future info campaign
If it’s the only tab open, switching isn’t an option. Women living under the threat of violence will be very stressed, so won’t be well placed to setup their browser ahead of time.
The MVP for this component was on the form to start an application for a restraining order. The design team fully explain their rationale and research on the project Github.
That information is out there, but people in these kinds of circumstances don't always have unrestricted internet time to research it. They might just be able to snatch a few minutes here and here and therefore not know much about how to use browsers etc.
This is particularly the case for an honour-based abuse service (forced marriage, honour killings etc) that we work with for example.
> What page are people on that might lead to domestic abuse?
The police, the divorce services, health services pages about contraception, abortion, sexual assault, LGBT youth services, etc etc etc. Think people who are already being abused, mostly.
Agreed. I suspect the number of people assisted by this button is vanishingly small, and outweighed by the number of people who don't get the information they're looking for because they accidentally click the button and can't find their way back.
Or the number of people harmed because the "exit this page" UI is on some pages only (for example, it isn't here on HN), and that is even more confusing for users who aren't tech savvy enough to realise its part of the site not the browser and who could come to rely on it.
Overall, I think this button is poor UX and shouldn't be used, even on pages with sensitive content that it is intended for.
That's what I wondered. Presumably services implementing it will add info about using the button before starting the journey, but I'm surprised there's no design system guidance about this. Without that information the button is far less useful.
One cool thing is when you first hit the shift key once, the "Exit this page" button expands vertically, and shows three small circles, one now filled in. So it makes it obvious that hitting the shift key did something related to that button. So if you hit the shift key for any other reason, you'll see something happen.
But still, I agree it seems a little hard to discover.
Out of curiosity I edited the page to put a textarea on it, so I could see what happens when you're typing a sentence and happen to use Shift 3 times: It breaks the button.
If the cursor is in the textarea, tapping Shift without any other keys will add 1 circle, but if that wasn't the 3rd one, any additional Shift will remove all the circles and they don't come back. You have to click outside the textarea and hit Shift 4 times to trigger it (the first one doesn't register any circles).
It seems like they tried to prevent accidental triggers (if you have 1 or 2 circles and hit anything except Shift they all disappear, and if you hold Shift while hitting another key you don't get any in the first place), but got something slightly wrong.
I understand that they couldn't use the Escape key, and so having an alternative makes sense, but I'm not sure as a user how I would ever discover the behavior of pressing "shift" three times.
Escape might be more intuitive but it's not more discoverable. Shift is used often when inputting information, and the mentioned visual feedback give this behavior an opportunity to be discovered.
Having said that, regardless of the key the guidelines on using this pattern say that you should explicitly inform the user of the feature before they first encounter it.
This site is flagged by malwarebytes as being compromised for some reason - I'm assuming this is a false positive given that no one else has been having issues
The concern with Esc is that if you hit more than 3 times the user will be stuck on the page. The first 3 presses would trigger the redirect, the 4th press would be intercepted by the browser and stop the page load.
1. This kind of browsing is more likely to be done on a phone, in private. I find the scenario a bit contrived in 2024.
2. It seems a bit weird to be concerned about UI patterns if you earnestly want this component to do its job.
3. If it's that important, the Escape key event can be added after DOMContentLoaded. Warn content authors to not overuse the component, and it would be fine. You can still have the triple-Shift key event for those cases that they specifically call out.
Its entirely plausible that someone in an abusive relationship is a number of mitigating circumstances:
- they don’t have a smartphone, or it’s been taken off them
- they’re forced to use a desktop because their abuser doesn’t want them to do things in private easily
- plausibly mobile has something different entirely, given that this appears to be desktop focused.
- They mention escape is intercepted by most browsers to stop loading, if someone is interrupted midway and panics and starts hitting escape, they could plausibly end up _stuck_ on the page they were trying to hide from their abuser.
2. I don't understand this comment. Surely this is a perfect example of when you want a component to work as well as possible, including UI research?
3. The mAjor point here is that the functionality of the escape key is ambiguous. It can do various things in various contexts, so you can't rely on people to use it for that, and visitors can't rely on it because it might just e.g. minimise a maximised window on MacOS, leaving the website on-screen.
Ideally this should pre-load the BBC weather page so switching to it is (near-)immediate. Currently it can take a while to load. Replace all DOM and then replace URL should do it.
There is also the matter of history; if I load the demo page, click that button, and press "back" then I'm on the demo page again.
And of course it'll be in the browser history.
I have to question how practically useful this is. Ctrl+W or middle click on tab isn't that far off. Or open private window and close that, which is a smart thing to do anyway.
Never mind that computers and internet access is ubiquitous enough these days that "using the family computer" for this sort of thing isn't really needed in the first place.
Overall this seems like a IE5-era solution that's pretty outdated and useless today. Perhaps even worse than useless because the implementation is so-so and protection it offers low.
Overall, I'd say telling people to use private windows and teaching then Ctrl+W is probably better.
> Ctrl+W or middle click on tab isn't that far off
The point of shift x3 is that it's consistent across keyboard layouts including laptops. I have a laptop where the location of the ctrl key is moved inward to make room for the function key. I frequently hit Fn instead of Ctrl and don't realize what's happening until I look at my keyboard. And that's not when I'm in distress.
Same goes for middle click. It's not a consistent interaction. On some laptops you can left click and right click to get a middle click. On my laptop, it's a three finger tap.
> Never mind that computers and internet access is ubiquitous enough these days that "using the family computer" for this sort of thing isn't really needed in the first place.
In a normal situation, this is true, but this is UI design for people in extraordinary situations. Their abuser may have taken their cellphone or other devices and may not have a choice in what computer they use or when they have access to it.
Nothing about this prevents private windows or Ctrl+W (assuming they have another window open so it doesn't look suspicious that they're staring at a blank desktop), it just gives victims a quick action they can take to prevent immediate retaliation.
> I frequently hit Fn instead of Ctrl and don't realize what's happening until I look at my keyboard. And that's not when I'm in distress. Same goes for middle click. It's not a consistent interaction.
Triple Shift that you can only on a single website is worse since you're even less likely to be able to use it in distress
Besides, as a site you can try to add typo-similar combinations for your "hide" action (like alt+w or win+w) instead of creating a totally different one
> Never mind that computers and internet access is ubiquitous enough these days that "using the family computer" for this sort of thing isn't really needed in the first place.
I'm just glad you're not in charge of this kind of services because although that might seem like an obvious thing to you, the reality is that the people needing that information the most are the ones who are the least likely to have easy access to a personal device with Internet access.
In particular, children and women in dysfunctional, abusive relationships are not very often provided with a smartphone and a data plan by their abusers.
I agree that the shift shortcut is unlikely to be of much use, but it's just one available method in addition to the rest.
I knew a person who was in abusive relationships where the abuser would keep making ridiculous claims that the person was cheating on them, and made them give up having their own phone as "proof" that they wouldn't cheat.
Of course, the abuser was cheating the whole time.
Abused men have similar problems although we are probably less likely to have no internet access restricting and monitoring communications is a common part of abuse.
My ex wife did not want me to get a smartphone and, in retrospect, it was because it let me keep in closer touch with family abroad (which is the main reason I have one at all). She also got very upset when I changed the password on my desktop some years previously.
> I agree that the shift shortcut is unlikely to be of much use, but it's just one available method in addition to the rest.
I don't know how the relevant user is informed about the option/feature, but assuming they're aware it is a positive feature both in terms of thoughtfulness and execution.
Be interested to see the stats on how often it gets called
I do this sometimes too. I wonder how hard it would be to make an addon that marks using the second person in forum posts with the spellchecker or something.
Sometimes I intend to do it, but it’s honestly usually just force of habit.
I think it should be obvious from the full comment that I don't think that doing _something_ for this is useless. Most of my comment is about how this is not actually sufficient to protect people.
And "we need to do something for this" doesn't mean that this particular feature/button is a good idea.
Like I said, telling people to use private windows and teaching them Ctrl+W seems like a better solution to solve the same problem to me. You can have a widget with some basic tips, and you can even show the correct instructions based on the browser the person is using.
I want to thank you for this comment. I had read the entire article thinking incorrectly about this. I thought it was for people who didn't want to see the material to navigate away, and kept thinking "just turn your head, close your eyes, hit the back button".
Then I saw your comment and realized I was entirely wrong about how I was thinking about this. I get it now.
> I have to question how practically useful this is. Ctrl+W or middle click on tab isn't that far off. Or open private window and close that, which is a smart thing to do anyway.
Users probably don't want to attract attention by using a private window (which they may or may not think about using), and most browsers I've seen have a distinct appearance when in private mode.
Ctrl+W in normal mode has the issue of leaving a trail: Ctrl-Shift-T or similar will bring it back.
I think you are underestimating how much being in an abusive relationship or even just poverty in general (poor people are more likely to be abused, so they're double punished) reduces your options and opportunities.
This goes for everything. Place where you live. The food that is on offer. Work opportunities, and with that the ability to plan life. Even living large enough to have a private space, like offering your kids an undisturbed place to study or - like in the post - somewhere you can safely report abuse.
I have seen it more than once: if someone from a poor family grows up and does really well in school and in college and breaks with the life they had before that is usually not enough. Because when there is time to write a CV the kids from the middle class all had parents that made them do other things. Charity work. Play the trumpet with a youth orchestra that somehow got to play in Carnegie hall. Chemistry camp. Dancing with a youth ballet company at the met. The system is rigged from the start. True meritocracy was never a thing.
A feature like this takes a developer a short time to implement, and if it saves someones life or stops abuse it is worth it.
Your description is exactly meritocracy under the original definition. The second kid has earned all of the merits, and the ones possessing the most documents of merit get ahead.
Fair point. But: the way the modern meritocracy is motivated is that it is a fair system. It is the whole idea of the American dream. Work hard and you can go anywhere. Except some people have to work a lot harder and be a lot smarter.
It would be meritocracy if both kids had equal opportunity to earn those merits. If the ability to do so is itself gated, it's only meritocratic within the privileged group.
No, equality of opportunity is specifically not needed for a meritocracy. It wasn’t in the original book[1], it didn’t happen in the old Chinese examination system, and it sure doesn’t happen now.
Merits are measurements, and society adapts to make those measurements a target.
Believe it or not, a lot of users don't understand the control key and are afraid to touch it because they think it might break their computer. They may not even be able to readily find it on their keyboard since they aren't accustomed to using it, but do tune out and skim over the things on their computer they think they can't understand.
> Overall, I'd say telling people to use private windows and teaching then Ctrl+W is probably better.
Yes, you should do that as well as understand that, for things like this, where you're providing information for vulnerable people across an entire population, your people are going to span a huge range of technical literacy and you will not be able to reach all of them in time. Give them the big red escape button with the special "dial 999" style memorable key combo as well as teach them everything else. But triage and do the "this solution works for the broadest number of people the quickest" thing first - the big red button.
You can only replace the URL with another URL on the same domain. Otherwise a site could make itself look like Google and then replace its URL with Google’s, and you’d have no way of knowing that it isn’t Google.
Would be pretty cool if it also changed the page navigation history to obscure where the user was before visiting bbc weather. If users taking the triple click action are presumed to be in distress, you'd want to remove the ability of the other party to simply click "back" and see where they were.
Shift key is widely used in Eastern Asian input methods to switch between English and Asian scripts. Pressing Shift while holding Alt is the way to cycle through different input methods on windows systems.
Using shift key is a decent idea for Latin script users, but is terrible for Asian script users.
Everyone on the nearby continent has some accented characters and possibly both English and their national keyboard installed.
Incidentally, this is a major complaint with smartphone OS designers that only speak English and don't realize there are places where people mix languages daily. That predictive spell checker should be configurable to accept more than one language at a time...
And there's no need to be to speak some "obscure" language (from the point of view of the US-centric designers) to hit this issue. iOS got better at mixed french / english, but it still cannot prevent itself from correcting "the" (the english the) to "thé" (french for tea). Oh well.
I don’t understand why this is an either/or. It could be Shift x3 or Esc x1. Tell the user to Shift x3 times, but if they forget or use habit, Esc will still be an option.
Someone might be panicking and press ESC twice "just to be sure". Your average user won't know that the second press will cancel the redirection process, inducing further stress and potentially completely closing the opportunity to move away from the page before the abuser sees it.
If you tell people they can use escape, they might press it too soon or repeatedly, preventing the very action they require. Nobody intuitively uses Esc to go to another page, so it's something you really need to be instructed to do. It makes sense to me.
Many large sites (eg The Warehouse [2]) participate by putting an icon at the bottom of their website. When clicked, a modal pops up with domestic abuse resources.
There’s a prominent exit button that closes the modal faster than a page navigation or finding the close tab button. Closing the popup returns you to a major website rather than a new tab page. And most importantly, your history contains no evidence you viewed the information.
The icon is the teal/white circle just in line and to the right of the social media icons at the bottom of the page. I missed it on first glance and would have no idea what it did.
Oh. I thought that was a light mode / dark mode button... Unlikely on a retail site I guess, but discoverability feels pretty bad. It's not like you couldn't just write "suffering from domestic abuse?" on there because the person doesn't have to click it in situations where that would be risky, and could come back later if they spot it at the wrong time.
I don’t know if you’re a kiwi but I assume that what it does is more common knowledge there.
I do think there is real value in being able to report domestic abuse without leaving an obvious paper trail. Call logs can be accessed by the account owner, I imagine a lot of people don’t know how to clear their history or aren’t confident enough they can do it correctly, etc.
It’s some small amount of peace of mind for victims who file reports, and with a cost of “adding a fake social link and a devs salary for a month” I’m pretty okay with it even if it literally only helps a single person. Bandwidth well spent.
> There’s a prominent exit button that closes the modal faster than a page navigation or finding the close tab button.
I spent about 30 seconds figuring out how to close it. The icon in the top-right? No, that goes to the start page. Perhaps the icon in the top-left? No, that goes to the main menu. Clicking outside the modal, like most other websites? Nope, doesn't work.
Turns out the close button is the half-circle at the bottom of the modal, which is exactly the same color as the rest of the modal. It's pretty obvious once you see it, but it took me way too long to find. They should've either placed it in the top-right like literally every other close button ever, or made it bright red so it's impossible to miss.
Unfortunately, clicking outside the modal (by far the biggest target to hit) doesn't actually close the modal, you need to click the (relatively small) close button.
However I am extremely disappointed to see that the questions section of that starts out gender neutral and then basically does the usual "if you're a woman being abused by a man..."
There is still no support for male victims of domestic violence, whether the abuser is male or female. :/ it's not hard to cater to all cases, no wonder men don't bother - particularly when it's reported that male victims who resort to calling the police are most often the one handcuffed/detained when they arrive.
In before someone comments something that we've all heard before - it's not a competition, both women & men can be helped by the same system, regardless of supposed statistical likeliness, etc.
This is very fair. I have a close male friend who was the victim of intense domestic violence, physical, emotional and financial manipulation by his ex partner.
He talks about how child support staff (like reception for example) are, are not favouring of him. They see DV in his profile and assume he's the perpetrator instantly. He had to explain himself constantly, no doubt reliving trauma when he does.
He has been struggling with the courts to gain sole custody of his child.
And to top it all off all the posters around these places are, like you say, about women reaching out against their abusive male partners. Which IS an issue and IS statistically more likely. But you make a very good point about these systems being able to help both.
> .. women reaching out against their abusive male partners. Which IS an issue and IS statistically more likely.
Be careful about your phrasing there. I hope the implied subject on both sides of the "and" is different. Women being victims is an issue, and women reaching out is significantly more likely.
Women reaching out is (obviously) not an issue, but is statistically more likely. Alternately, women being victims is an issue, but the statistical likelihood of women being victims is unknown, and we have good reason to believe there is significant reporting bias.
UK minister is trying to close All female prisons. They are already only 4% of prisoners, but that is it enough. So much about accountability.
> men can be helped by the same system
That is just a misinformation! Calling police if abuser is a female, and you are a male, is a VERY bad idea.
Without police you only get some bruises. With police you get escorted in handcuffs in front entire neighbourhood, get fired from job, pay very expensive lawyers, get criminal record and possible prison time!
There is no way to fix that, just leave and drop all contact!
It doesn’t matter, because even if men call for help, they won’t be helped.
There was a study in UK that if a man calls the police for domestic violence, there’s 56% chances the police only interviews the woman, and 23% chances he’s threatened of arrest (with, I think, 3% or 10% he’s actually led to the police station, I don’t remember the specifics, but still higher than not calling the police).
In France, a sad sentence of the government hotline “Female violence info” mentions that 10% calls are from men. For a hotline with “female” on it. The report continues that, since it’s only 10%, it’s still generally violence against women.
So yeah. Let’s be honest. Men better not end up in need of help.
Shift is not ideal either. On Microsoft Windows, pressed thrice in quick succession will prompt to activate sticky keys, and divert focus from the web browser.
> BBC Weather’s homepage is a content-rich page. Users have a reason to be looking at it and to be looking for an extended period of time.
Most of that rich content is obstructed by them bloody cookie warnings, on first visit.
That’s not a very convincing simulation of “I’ve been looking at this page for the last 5 mins!”
I get one here in the UK, in incognito. It's actually one of the nicest cookie banners you'll ever see—just 75px tall at the top of the page, and it doesn't float so it disappears when you scroll. I recommend at least trying to see it, to appreciate its superiority over all the other cookie banners.
I often leave cookie popovers unclicked. Sometimes they take an annoying amount of work to decline cookies, and they can be used to cover video ads anyway.
A while ago we did a site for a nonprofit focused on domestic violence.
We preloaded Kohl’s (a department store sort of retailer in America) and fiddled with the safety exit button to make sure Kohl’s came up really quickly. If we would have worked on the site longer, I would have a done a rotation of a couple of different stereotypical shopping websites. (Kohl’s was picked by the organisations’s executive director who, unfortunately, had plenty of first hand experience with domestic violence.)
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[ 3.2 ms ] story [ 277 ms ] threadAn upsetting but nonetheless incredibly interesting abnormal UX problem to solve. I appreciate seeing this much thought being put into things like this.
I wonder why the gov.uk team are getting so much publicity(?) In the last few years.
As much as I love the aesthetic, I'm developing a fear that they'll soon spin off into a startup with some kind of paid model, and that government websites will regress.
Irrational fear, I know, but I cant shake off the startup-vibes I'm getting when I read such posts about what is essentially a public service.
gov.uk got started, in part, because the 2009 financial meltdown left a lot of good startup designers and engineers with not enough to do (and made civil service jobs more attractive for a bit!)
It's a very broad topic to cover so I'll be terse with evidence/examples only. UK government provides a lot of open data and APIs for the country [0], [1]. They are free and pretty much not throttled. They have a license [2] for a lot of this data which is formal but nearly as free as John Carmack's legendary hacker-friendly "have fun" license [3]. There is also a lot of historical Ordnance Survey data and historical legislation data from the National Archives. And of course, you can see the openness in how they have built gov.uk, as blog articles appear on HN about it quite often.
There is also a lot of government infrastructure provided to local governments, such as gov.uk Notify [4] or a freely available NHS website CMS (which is why many NHS websites work the same). There is a guide [5] mostly intended for government services but free for others to use on building accessible, secure and quite good-looking websites.
Most other governments I lived under are either technically behind UK or they have very advanced tech capabilities in certain branches of the government only (such as the armed forces) but keep it out of the public eye. Ultimately, I think it is the culture of welcoming everyone's participation in technology that makes UK gov so forthcoming and open with their tech and data. Doing this is seen as kind and civilised, which is how governments want to be seen. Of course, there are still areas of improvement in how UK gov provides data, as there always are in everything.
Finally, I should mention you can find many BBC technology outreach programmes from the early days of home computing. They are all over YouTube if you search for "BCC home computing". There was and continues to be a lot of techno-optimism in the country. It is one of the admittedly not many things that persist from the pre-austerity times.
[0] https://www.data.gov.uk
[1] https://www.api.gov.uk/index/#index
[2] https://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/doc/open-government-lice...
[3] https://github.com/id-Software/DOOM/blob/master/README.TXT (before GPL became popular, id software code was distributed with this readme that said "Have fun")
[4] https://www.notifications.service.gov.uk
[5] https://frontend.design-system.service.gov.uk
Salaries play a significant role.
Unlike a lot of other countries, private sector salaries for SWEs suck in much of the UK, and gov.uk (in reality part of the Civil Service), GCHQ+MoD, and BBC can pay fairly competitively and give a fairly decent pension compared to private sector gigs.
That said, I'd disagree with NHS IT - it's almost entirely outsourced to regional MSPs who suck (and I say this as a former vendor who's helped sell products those guys use in NHS environments)
It’s likely part of their efforts to be more transparent, work with other governments and better support departments without having to be in 50 places at once. It’ll also help with recruitment.
Doesn't it make a lot of sense to be open about how a public service is built and delivered, maybe much more so than any for-pay service in fact?
https://www.gov.uk/government/organisations/government-digit...
https://18f.gsa.gov/
https://gds.blog.gov.uk/2015/01/20/gds-usds/
I mean, unless the next PM is Zombie Thatcher, this seems like an excessive level of privatisation.
What do they use frequently enough that they would learn about this exit functionality rather than just clicking a bookmark bar, closing the tab, or just switching the tab?
This seems like such a contrived scenario with a solution that only works for gov uk sites. Why not teach users how to switch or close tabs with keyboard shortcuts?
+1. "Close tab" is more robust, well-supported and well-known.
It seems more likely a user will load an inoccuous page as a decoy, than learn triple-shift is a quick exit.
Still, interesting read, to hear the reasoning. Would like to see empirical evidence/user testing.
vs
<partner walks in> <nothing really special about a tab loading the weather> <you still live in fear but you're not getting physically abused>
My critiques were on the sad cases:
* Presses <Ctrl><Ctrl><Ctrl>. Wait why isnt this working? Too late.
* Presses <Shift><Shift><Shift> on another sensitive site that doesn't implement this. Too late.
* Presses <Shift><Shift><Shift> on a poorly supported browser, or after the functionality is removed, or after it conflicts with OS-level (it might not today, but who knows about future OS updates)
Either the abuser walked in while the person was still on the page with the big red button or not. It is not faster to press the big red button or shift 3 times than it is to close a tab.
Indeed.
Surely Ctrl+W (with a 2nd decoy tab already there and at BBC Weather) is 10x faster than finding and clicking a button on the page you're reading?
EDIT: another issue with the Exit This Page as implemented on eg https://www.camden.gov.uk/planning-to-leave-an-abuser - if you open it in a private browsing session, and click it, it sends you to Google, but of course there the first thing you get is the massive cookies pop-up. So wouldn't that be a bit of a red flag to whoever just walked in? :/
They see a page changing
Black eye
Their comment looks similar to any other comment on technical/UX matters, including yours and mine.
No, it’s telling people how they should behave, as you can see. It makes no attempt to step into the shoes of the user.
https://support.apple.com/guide/personal-safety/how-safety-c...
I assume there's a .gov.uk page somewhere that lists resources for people who are in abusive relationships. I imagine if an abusive partner walked in to find you reading that, that might set them off.
An accidental ctrl-Q is much worse, because closed incognito windows can't be recovered.
Firefox gave me plenty of scars over the years. CTRL-Q and CTRL-W are just two; another's the fear of the browser randomly going "updates have been installed, you're not allowed to do anything until you restart; shame about that unsaved work you had on the page we just blanked" shit that used to fly on Ubuntu.
(Maybe still does? I browse from Windows nowadays.)
How likely are you to know keyboard shortcuts?
As a UX designer, would you not want to make a big safe UX button that you need no prior training or experience of, that you can trust to help you get out of a difficult situation.
Footsteps. Oh shit. They’re coming back. Is it Ctrl-W? Or Ctrl-V? Oh fuck, he’s nearly in the room. Quick, where’s the tiny little cross to close the window… oh, wait, click that exit page button, or just quickly hit shift a bunch of times. “Oh yes, I was just looking at the weather for tomorrow. I was thinking about whether to put some washing out on the line…”
> just quickly hit shift a bunch of times
How would you even know about this shortcut you never use anywhere, let alone remember it in a time of stress?
This is a much more realistic user story than 99% you will ever read.
In principle, information about this could be propagated, if it's reliably available on UK govt sites at this point (I'm not sure if it is).
https://github.com/alphagov/govuk-design-system/discussions/...
This is particularly the case for an honour-based abuse service (forced marriage, honour killings etc) that we work with for example.
The police, the divorce services, health services pages about contraception, abortion, sexual assault, LGBT youth services, etc etc etc. Think people who are already being abused, mostly.
Agreed. I suspect the number of people assisted by this button is vanishingly small, and outweighed by the number of people who don't get the information they're looking for because they accidentally click the button and can't find their way back.
Or the number of people harmed because the "exit this page" UI is on some pages only (for example, it isn't here on HN), and that is even more confusing for users who aren't tech savvy enough to realise its part of the site not the browser and who could come to rely on it.
Overall, I think this button is poor UX and shouldn't be used, even on pages with sensitive content that it is intended for.
https://design-system.service.gov.uk/components/exit-this-pa...
One cool thing is when you first hit the shift key once, the "Exit this page" button expands vertically, and shows three small circles, one now filled in. So it makes it obvious that hitting the shift key did something related to that button. So if you hit the shift key for any other reason, you'll see something happen.
But still, I agree it seems a little hard to discover.
If the cursor is in the textarea, tapping Shift without any other keys will add 1 circle, but if that wasn't the 3rd one, any additional Shift will remove all the circles and they don't come back. You have to click outside the textarea and hit Shift 4 times to trigger it (the first one doesn't register any circles).
It seems like they tried to prevent accidental triggers (if you have 1 or 2 circles and hit anything except Shift they all disappear, and if you hold Shift while hitting another key you don't get any in the first place), but got something slightly wrong.
https://design-system.service.gov.uk/patterns/exit-a-page-qu...
Having said that, regardless of the key the guidelines on using this pattern say that you should explicitly inform the user of the feature before they first encounter it.
https://design-system.service.gov.uk/patterns/exit-a-page-qu...
https://design-system.service.gov.uk/components/exit-this-pa...
2. It seems a bit weird to be concerned about UI patterns if you earnestly want this component to do its job.
3. If it's that important, the Escape key event can be added after DOMContentLoaded. Warn content authors to not overuse the component, and it would be fine. You can still have the triple-Shift key event for those cases that they specifically call out.
- they don’t have a smartphone, or it’s been taken off them
- they’re forced to use a desktop because their abuser doesn’t want them to do things in private easily
- plausibly mobile has something different entirely, given that this appears to be desktop focused.
- They mention escape is intercepted by most browsers to stop loading, if someone is interrupted midway and panics and starts hitting escape, they could plausibly end up _stuck_ on the page they were trying to hide from their abuser.
2. I don't understand this comment. Surely this is a perfect example of when you want a component to work as well as possible, including UI research?
3. The mAjor point here is that the functionality of the escape key is ambiguous. It can do various things in various contexts, so you can't rely on people to use it for that, and visitors can't rely on it because it might just e.g. minimise a maximised window on MacOS, leaving the website on-screen.
> You can quickly leave this website by clicking the “X” in the top right or by pressing the Escape key twice.
And it does have some kind of Escape key functionality.
The gov.uk page has some listed hotlines by nation (https://www.gov.uk/guidance/domestic-abuse-how-to-get-help#g...), but none of them are actually using that exact red button:
- https://www.nationaldahelpline.org.uk/ uses green bookmark in bottom right and redirects to google.co.uk
- https://dsahelpline.org/ has a green area at the bottom right
There is also the matter of history; if I load the demo page, click that button, and press "back" then I'm on the demo page again.
And of course it'll be in the browser history.
I have to question how practically useful this is. Ctrl+W or middle click on tab isn't that far off. Or open private window and close that, which is a smart thing to do anyway.
Never mind that computers and internet access is ubiquitous enough these days that "using the family computer" for this sort of thing isn't really needed in the first place.
Overall this seems like a IE5-era solution that's pretty outdated and useless today. Perhaps even worse than useless because the implementation is so-so and protection it offers low.
Overall, I'd say telling people to use private windows and teaching then Ctrl+W is probably better.
> Never mind that computers and internet access is ubiquitous enough these days that "using the family computer" for this sort of thing isn't really needed in the first place. In a normal situation, this is true, but this is UI design for people in extraordinary situations. Their abuser may have taken their cellphone or other devices and may not have a choice in what computer they use or when they have access to it.
Nothing about this prevents private windows or Ctrl+W (assuming they have another window open so it doesn't look suspicious that they're staring at a blank desktop), it just gives victims a quick action they can take to prevent immediate retaliation.
Triple Shift that you can only on a single website is worse since you're even less likely to be able to use it in distress
Besides, as a site you can try to add typo-similar combinations for your "hide" action (like alt+w or win+w) instead of creating a totally different one
I'm just glad you're not in charge of this kind of services because although that might seem like an obvious thing to you, the reality is that the people needing that information the most are the ones who are the least likely to have easy access to a personal device with Internet access.
In particular, children and women in dysfunctional, abusive relationships are not very often provided with a smartphone and a data plan by their abusers.
I agree that the shift shortcut is unlikely to be of much use, but it's just one available method in addition to the rest.
This sounds like something which you have no evidence at all for claiming.
I'm not sure why you would be the quickly dismissive of something that would seem obvious to many.
Of course, the abuser was cheating the whole time.
So it does happen, contrary to what you claim.
My ex wife did not want me to get a smartphone and, in retrospect, it was because it let me keep in closer touch with family abroad (which is the main reason I have one at all). She also got very upset when I changed the password on my desktop some years previously.
I don't know how the relevant user is informed about the option/feature, but assuming they're aware it is a positive feature both in terms of thoughtfulness and execution.
Be interested to see the stats on how often it gets called
Why are you attacking the user instead of just focusing on the argument?
Sometimes I intend to do it, but it’s honestly usually just force of habit.
And "we need to do something for this" doesn't mean that this particular feature/button is a good idea.
Like I said, telling people to use private windows and teaching them Ctrl+W seems like a better solution to solve the same problem to me. You can have a widget with some basic tips, and you can even show the correct instructions based on the browser the person is using.
Then I saw your comment and realized I was entirely wrong about how I was thinking about this. I get it now.
Users probably don't want to attract attention by using a private window (which they may or may not think about using), and most browsers I've seen have a distinct appearance when in private mode.
Ctrl+W in normal mode has the issue of leaving a trail: Ctrl-Shift-T or similar will bring it back.
That also exists with this button: just press "back". Even easier.
This goes for everything. Place where you live. The food that is on offer. Work opportunities, and with that the ability to plan life. Even living large enough to have a private space, like offering your kids an undisturbed place to study or - like in the post - somewhere you can safely report abuse.
I have seen it more than once: if someone from a poor family grows up and does really well in school and in college and breaks with the life they had before that is usually not enough. Because when there is time to write a CV the kids from the middle class all had parents that made them do other things. Charity work. Play the trumpet with a youth orchestra that somehow got to play in Carnegie hall. Chemistry camp. Dancing with a youth ballet company at the met. The system is rigged from the start. True meritocracy was never a thing.
A feature like this takes a developer a short time to implement, and if it saves someones life or stops abuse it is worth it.
Merits are measurements, and society adapts to make those measurements a target.
[1]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Rise_of_the_Meritocracy
For the inequality of outcome to be fair and just, there has to be at least some kind equality of opportunity in a meritocratic society.
I've been using both for years, never had this issue ??
Yes, you should do that as well as understand that, for things like this, where you're providing information for vulnerable people across an entire population, your people are going to span a huge range of technical literacy and you will not be able to reach all of them in time. Give them the big red escape button with the special "dial 999" style memorable key combo as well as teach them everything else. But triage and do the "this solution works for the broadest number of people the quickest" thing first - the big red button.
I don't think gov.uk would admit that they want to exclude those users.
Everyone on the nearby continent has some accented characters and possibly both English and their national keyboard installed.
Incidentally, this is a major complaint with smartphone OS designers that only speak English and don't realize there are places where people mix languages daily. That predictive spell checker should be configurable to accept more than one language at a time...
Many large sites (eg The Warehouse [2]) participate by putting an icon at the bottom of their website. When clicked, a modal pops up with domestic abuse resources.
There’s a prominent exit button that closes the modal faster than a page navigation or finding the close tab button. Closing the popup returns you to a major website rather than a new tab page. And most importantly, your history contains no evidence you viewed the information.
[1] https://shielded.co.nz
[2] https://www.thewarehouse.co.nz
Otherwise, it's fine.
I'm not trying to be dismissive, but I genuinely can't imagine this helping anyone. I am completely open to being wrong though.
I do think there is real value in being able to report domestic abuse without leaving an obvious paper trail. Call logs can be accessed by the account owner, I imagine a lot of people don’t know how to clear their history or aren’t confident enough they can do it correctly, etc.
It’s some small amount of peace of mind for victims who file reports, and with a cost of “adding a fake social link and a devs salary for a month” I’m pretty okay with it even if it literally only helps a single person. Bandwidth well spent.
I spent about 30 seconds figuring out how to close it. The icon in the top-right? No, that goes to the start page. Perhaps the icon in the top-left? No, that goes to the main menu. Clicking outside the modal, like most other websites? Nope, doesn't work.
Turns out the close button is the half-circle at the bottom of the modal, which is exactly the same color as the rest of the modal. It's pretty obvious once you see it, but it took me way too long to find. They should've either placed it in the top-right like literally every other close button ever, or made it bright red so it's impossible to miss.
However I am extremely disappointed to see that the questions section of that starts out gender neutral and then basically does the usual "if you're a woman being abused by a man..."
There is still no support for male victims of domestic violence, whether the abuser is male or female. :/ it's not hard to cater to all cases, no wonder men don't bother - particularly when it's reported that male victims who resort to calling the police are most often the one handcuffed/detained when they arrive.
In before someone comments something that we've all heard before - it's not a competition, both women & men can be helped by the same system, regardless of supposed statistical likeliness, etc.
He talks about how child support staff (like reception for example) are, are not favouring of him. They see DV in his profile and assume he's the perpetrator instantly. He had to explain himself constantly, no doubt reliving trauma when he does.
He has been struggling with the courts to gain sole custody of his child.
And to top it all off all the posters around these places are, like you say, about women reaching out against their abusive male partners. Which IS an issue and IS statistically more likely. But you make a very good point about these systems being able to help both.
Be careful about your phrasing there. I hope the implied subject on both sides of the "and" is different. Women being victims is an issue, and women reaching out is significantly more likely.
Women reaching out is (obviously) not an issue, but is statistically more likely. Alternately, women being victims is an issue, but the statistical likelihood of women being victims is unknown, and we have good reason to believe there is significant reporting bias.
> men can be helped by the same system
That is just a misinformation! Calling police if abuser is a female, and you are a male, is a VERY bad idea.
Without police you only get some bruises. With police you get escorted in handcuffs in front entire neighbourhood, get fired from job, pay very expensive lawyers, get criminal record and possible prison time!
There is no way to fix that, just leave and drop all contact!
There was a study in UK that if a man calls the police for domestic violence, there’s 56% chances the police only interviews the woman, and 23% chances he’s threatened of arrest (with, I think, 3% or 10% he’s actually led to the police station, I don’t remember the specifics, but still higher than not calling the police).
In France, a sad sentence of the government hotline “Female violence info” mentions that 10% calls are from men. For a hotline with “female” on it. The report continues that, since it’s only 10%, it’s still generally violence against women.
So yeah. Let’s be honest. Men better not end up in need of help.
Most of that rich content is obstructed by them bloody cookie warnings, on first visit. That’s not a very convincing simulation of “I’ve been looking at this page for the last 5 mins!”
We preloaded Kohl’s (a department store sort of retailer in America) and fiddled with the safety exit button to make sure Kohl’s came up really quickly. If we would have worked on the site longer, I would have a done a rotation of a couple of different stereotypical shopping websites. (Kohl’s was picked by the organisations’s executive director who, unfortunately, had plenty of first hand experience with domestic violence.)