Re: [Bimi] (non)desire for bimi

[Terry Zink <[e-mail]>]

Thanks John, and Dave.

> 1. An axiom in usability research is to not treat developers or
> researchers as subjects (unless they really are the target audience.)
> In terms of cognitive detail and usage style, such folk differ
> substantially from the general user population.
>
> Simply put, you or I or John do not matter in this calculus.  We are the
> essence of a biased sample...

I agree, which is why I said earlier that I am not representative of the entire space.


> I think you're extrapolating from a point.  To extrapolate from
> another point, I find all those blinky things extremely annoying and
> specifically choose mail software that does not show them.

Yes, there are some people that don't like this type of UX. And with BIMI, you'll still be able to use the same software that doesn't show images, HTML, sender photos, etc. There's no change there.

> It makes it in effect another web bug.

Hmm...

That heavily depends upon implementation. A web bug, as I understand it, helps to track user behavior - did the user open up my mail? While I concede that BIMI could be used this way, it's not a particularly effective way to do it. It would require setting up a lot of DNS records, and then being able to stand up infrastructure that can handle all those requests.

Most large receives wouldn't serve up a BIMI logo from the actual location pointed to by headers/DNS records each time they needed it. Instead, they'd periodically poll the logos/certs they need, upload them into a local database, and then pull from there. So, as a sender/brand, you might send out 100,000 messages to a single receiver and intend to use BIMI to see how many people interacted with the message. But in reality, you might see only 1 request - the one where that receiver saw it needed your logo and then downloaded it after verifying it. And then 30 days later, you saw them download it again.

So, while a web bug is a possible concern, a large receiver (and I would think even a medium sized one) would have to make use of more efficient architectural implementations to make the web bug concerns a minor one on the list of things to worry about.

--Terry

________________________________
From: bimi <[e-mail]> on behalf of Dave Crocker <[e-mail]>
Sent: Thursday, February 14, 2019 10:06 AM
To: John Levine; [e-mail]
Cc: Terry Zink
Subject: Re: [Bimi] (non)desire for bimi

On 2/14/2019 9:52 AM, John Levine wrote:
> In article <[e-mail]> you write:
>> How does this not show demand? Isn't this an example of web mail providers wanting to enhance the user
>> experience, and companies happily obliging, and me as a user being pleased?
>
> I think you're extrapolating from a point.  To extrapolate from
> another point, I find all those blinky things extremely annoying and
> specifically choose mail software that does not show them.


Indeed.

      1. An axiom in usability research is to not treat developers or
researchers as subjects (unless they really are the target audience.)
In terms of cognitive detail and usage style, such folk differ
substantially from the general user population.

      2. Any general claim about users in general needs to have some
sort of statistical basis that gives credence to that generalization.

Simply put, you or I or John do not matter in this calculus.  We are the
essence of a biased sample...




--
Dave Crocker
Brandenburg InternetWorking
bbiw.net

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