This smells to me of a team overthinking something so much that they land on something unintuitive. It smells of "over-fitting" — a solution way too specific when something general and flexible is needed.
Pressing shift three times is clever… but way too clever. Even if you stick a giant popup saying "hit shift three times to quickly exit" I'm not sure anyone in a panic will remember—loads of people don't even know which key is shift, especially when there's three buttons on a keyboard that look the same and only two are the same. I've come across people who always use shift-lock and did't realise you could use shift for anything. I'd be interested to know what UX tests they actually did, and who with.
If I was going down the press a key three times, I would have gone with pressing any key three times apart from the number keys (plus an info box when you enter the page—"hit any key 3 times to quickly exit to the weather"). Most people, I'm sure, would mash the spacebar in a panic but if they missed then it would still work.
What I would have preferred to test would be 'mashing'/chording — pressing more than one non-modifier key at the same time, so a user could just smash a load of keys at the same time in a panic.
Going to the Weather page is a great idea, though.
First of all. Not using escape key to escape is the standard for almost all applications since the 90s. Do you use escape to close the browser? A tab? your email client? No. All software converged on the idea that a close button was not a good idea, we are left with the actual button as a vestige.
Second of all, this software is designed for people in high stress situations where one of their main goals is to avoid detection, they will not only memorize the escape sequence, but they will likely have their finger on the shift key at all times.
I have my doubts about how sure you are that people in high stress situations will memorize the escape sequence for one website.
I think as devs we often think of our site or application as the center of the user's universe, but I don't think users memorize the minutia of our applications like we think / would hope.
Also, I actually worked with folks in abusive relationships at one time, their actions are not as predictable as you might hope.
> Second of all, this software is designed for people in high stress situations where one of their main goals is to avoid detection
FTFA: `It’s intended to be a safety tool. A way for people in unstable, potentially violent, domestic situations to quickly leave the page.`
This is the craziest part of this entire article to me. The UK Government needed to invent a whole design system that included an "ejection seat" button in case you're caught looking at UK Government websites?
Or does this button exist because one website in particular needed this feature?
I think it's useful to think about the same way you think about test specificity. Ie, of all the people in the world that hit this page, how many of them are going to need this feature and use it correctly vs. how many don't need this feature and accidentally use it. Using the Escape key is fantastic for "I needed this feature and it worked", which is probably 1 in 100,000 users of the page. It's terrible for "I accidentally used this feature I didn't know about" and that's the other 99,999.
All your other suggestions fail for this reason too - you need a high level of confidence the person really intended to escape. I for example would mash the space bar three times to scroll down.
Along these lines, in the GitHub discussion they show a graph of the number of times the button was pressed, bucketed by the platform the user was on, which is all utterly useless info.
It should be normalized as a percentage of page views at the very least.
They’re basically saying “hey we added a big red button and people press it sometimes”. The button could say “fire lasers at my cat” and some amount of people would press it (whether intentional or not).
Hitting shift 3 times happens just by holding the button down too long while typing caps sometimes too. I constantly have sticky keys coming up when inadvertently holding down shift and getting distracted while typing.
I've definitely triggered sticky-keys with my shift before, but I can't remember a time it was while typing - potentially while shift + arrow to highlight, though.
But it is one of those features that I turn off the second it annoys me 1 too many times.
There's also a giant red button you can click. That's the main route and it's pretty good for a paniced user who needs the solution right in front of them.
Yeah, this was my reaction... I wonder if they collect logs of how many people use the triple shift function. I do like GDS' focus on research and service design, but this feels slighly over-engineered from that space.
The logs are just noise without a way to prove the users’ intention to use the triple-shift feature for its intended purpose.
Maybe you could normalize it by listening for triple-shift presses on all pages on the site (not just sensitive ones) and calling that a baseline of accidental events.
But, how do we know that events in the baseline are truly accidental? What if users learned the behavior and tried using it on pages where it’s not implemented?
There’s just no good way to get analytics on this feature without interviewing users somehow.
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.
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.
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.
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!
> 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.
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.
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.
> 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.
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 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.
> 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
> 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.
> 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.
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.
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.
In case the author reads this, I tried the test page on a newish Windows install and at the third shift-press, a "Do you want to enable Sticky Keys?" Windows dialog opened, and the third shift keypress didn't make it to the browser so I didn't exit. Instead of nervously staring at the weather, I was nervously staring at the potentially damning content I was trying to get away from, plus a weird Windows 7 themed dialog window that I'd never seen before nor really understood.
I wouldn't be surprised if this will happen for anyone trying the triple-shift on a vanilla Windows install who doesn't actually use Sticky Keys, nor explicitly turn it off (ie a majority of visitors).
That was my first thought, how did they not consider sticky keys?! It even makes a sound! The prompt triggers on the fifth press but it's easy to have had already queued two presses beforehand.
This risk is much worse than whatever layout differences and interactions with VoiceOver they observed for Control.
Does anybody have any stats for the use of these kinds of buttons? A few of our clients - victim services and honour-based abuse services - ask us to add these kinds of buttons, but I've always wondered they actually get used instead of e.g. people just closing the browser window. The issue for us with adding tracking is that it would slow the interaction which, even if it was only a few milliseconds, isn't something we want to risk. (Or worse, if the JS it breaks and the link doesn't work). I guess it would have to be some kind of post-hoc survey for victims of domestic abuse who've used a site and are now somewhere safe.
Edit - thanks to @jdietrich below there are some stats on this link, which shows a correlation between events you'd expect to increase the rush of domestic abuse, such as the Covid lockdowns: https://github.com/alphagov/govuk-design-system/discussions/... I do wonder how they got those stats though.
Edit 2 - I'm so glad this got posted! I've been wondering about this for ages and it's really nice to get some evidence for its use. Reading through the comments has also solidified my thinking around "why don't people just close the browser window" - many people who use honour-based abuse services are very computer illiterate, don't have time to learn about incognito windows / (Ctrl | Command) + W, and can only snatch computer time here and there. Abusers can look back at the browser history, but if the choice is between being discovered on an honour-based abuse website or the chance that the abuser won't look at the history, the second is clearly superior.
Edit 3 - I really wonder about the three-press shift keyboard shortcut. Real lack of discoverability, and my worry would be that the lack of consistency across sites would lead to situations where people are on non-gov.uk websites and think that keyboard shortcut would work there too. Although I suppose the fact that the first shift press activates the button in some way does tie it to the presence of the button on screen.
Edit 4 - It doesn't seem to be in use on any relevant gov.uk pages. The pilot on the "check for legal aid" pages seems to have ended and it's not on the pages about domestic abuse.
Most probably they're using the sendBeacon method triggered by the visibilitychange event. sendBeacon doesn't delay the unload and asynchronously makes the network request simultaneously.
Yeah the fact that there's no concrete demo beyond the basic JavaScript snippet/demo makes me wonder how well this actually works. I wanted to know how users are informed to press shift repeatedly to use the button? It's weird UX.
It does remind me of "boss keys" that old DOS games used to have.
> An honor killing (American English), honour killing (Commonwealth English), or shame killing is a traditional form of murder in which a person is killed by or at the behest of members of their family or their partner, due to culturally sanctioned beliefs that such homicides are necessary as retribution for the perceived dishonoring of the family by the victim.
> Methods of murdering include stoning, stabbing, beating, burning, beheading, hanging, throat slashing, lethal acid attacks, shooting, and strangulation. Sometimes, communities perform murders in public to warn others in the community of the possible consequences of engaging in what is seen as illicit behavior
> Often, minor girls and boys are selected by the family to act as the murderers, so that the murderer may benefit from the most favorable legal outcome. Boys and sometimes women in the family are often asked to closely control and monitor the behavior of their siblings or other members of the family, to ensure that they do not do anything to tarnish the 'honor' and 'reputation' of the family
> Sharif Kanaana, professor of anthropology at Birzeit University, says that honor killing is: "A complicated issue that cuts deep into the history of Islamic society. .. What the men of the family, clan, or tribe seek control of in a patrilineal society is reproductive power. Women for the tribe were considered a factory for making men. Honor killing is not a means to control sexual power or behavior. What's behind it is the issue of fertility or reproductive power."
> Nighat Taufeeq of the women's resource center Shirkatgah in Lahore, Pakistan says: "It is an unholy alliance that works against women: the killers take pride in what they have done, the tribal leaders condone the act and protect the killers and the police connive the cover-up." The lawyer and human rights activist Hina Jilani says, "The right to life of women in Pakistan is conditional on their obeying social norms and traditions."
> Fareena Alam, editor of a Muslim magazine, writes that honor killings which arise in Western cultures such as Britain are a tactic for immigrant families to cope with the alienating consequences of urbanization. Alam argues that immigrants remain close to the home culture and their relatives because it provides a safety net. She writes that 'In villages "back home", a man's sphere of control was broader, with a large support system. In our cities full of strangers, there is virtually no control over who one's family members sit, talk or work with.'
Hopefully that expands on it. A rotten culture of "family values" that sees women as nothing more than baby factories and keeps them under control at all times, through intimidation, persecution, monitoring, and straight up state-sanctioned killing and blaming of the victim if they try to assert themselves.
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?
> 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.
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?
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.
> 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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Pressing shift three times is clever… but way too clever. Even if you stick a giant popup saying "hit shift three times to quickly exit" I'm not sure anyone in a panic will remember—loads of people don't even know which key is shift, especially when there's three buttons on a keyboard that look the same and only two are the same. I've come across people who always use shift-lock and did't realise you could use shift for anything. I'd be interested to know what UX tests they actually did, and who with.
If I was going down the press a key three times, I would have gone with pressing any key three times apart from the number keys (plus an info box when you enter the page—"hit any key 3 times to quickly exit to the weather"). Most people, I'm sure, would mash the spacebar in a panic but if they missed then it would still work.
What I would have preferred to test would be 'mashing'/chording — pressing more than one non-modifier key at the same time, so a user could just smash a load of keys at the same time in a panic.
Going to the Weather page is a great idea, though.
First of all. Not using escape key to escape is the standard for almost all applications since the 90s. Do you use escape to close the browser? A tab? your email client? No. All software converged on the idea that a close button was not a good idea, we are left with the actual button as a vestige.
Second of all, this software is designed for people in high stress situations where one of their main goals is to avoid detection, they will not only memorize the escape sequence, but they will likely have their finger on the shift key at all times.
I think as devs we often think of our site or application as the center of the user's universe, but I don't think users memorize the minutia of our applications like we think / would hope.
Also, I actually worked with folks in abusive relationships at one time, their actions are not as predictable as you might hope.
Not to close a tab or entire application, no, but to unfocus a field, close a modal window or ad pop-up, back in something like a Typeform, etc.
Really? I always hit "escape" when I get a popover on a website, and it often works.
Many TUI interfaces use it for "go back" or "exit" e.g. BIOS settings.
FTFA: `It’s intended to be a safety tool. A way for people in unstable, potentially violent, domestic situations to quickly leave the page.`
This is the craziest part of this entire article to me. The UK Government needed to invent a whole design system that included an "ejection seat" button in case you're caught looking at UK Government websites?
Or does this button exist because one website in particular needed this feature?
Over design much?
All your other suggestions fail for this reason too - you need a high level of confidence the person really intended to escape. I for example would mash the space bar three times to scroll down.
It should be normalized as a percentage of page views at the very least.
They’re basically saying “hey we added a big red button and people press it sometimes”. The button could say “fire lasers at my cat” and some amount of people would press it (whether intentional or not).
But it is one of those features that I turn off the second it annoys me 1 too many times.
They keyboard shortcut is just gravy.
Maybe you could normalize it by listening for triple-shift presses on all pages on the site (not just sensitive ones) and calling that a baseline of accidental events.
But, how do we know that events in the baseline are truly accidental? What if users learned the behavior and tried using it on pages where it’s not implemented?
There’s just no good way to get analytics on this feature without interviewing users somehow.
Dead Comment
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
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.
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.
> 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!
Otherwise, it's fine.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Why are you attacking the user instead of just focusing on the argument?
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
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.
This sounds like something which you have no evidence at all for claiming.
> 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
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.
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've been using both for years, never had this issue ??
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.
Dead Comment
I wouldn't be surprised if this will happen for anyone trying the triple-shift on a vanilla Windows install who doesn't actually use Sticky Keys, nor explicitly turn it off (ie a majority of visitors).
This risk is much worse than whatever layout differences and interactions with VoiceOver they observed for Control.
Edit - thanks to @jdietrich below there are some stats on this link, which shows a correlation between events you'd expect to increase the rush of domestic abuse, such as the Covid lockdowns: https://github.com/alphagov/govuk-design-system/discussions/... I do wonder how they got those stats though.
Edit 2 - I'm so glad this got posted! I've been wondering about this for ages and it's really nice to get some evidence for its use. Reading through the comments has also solidified my thinking around "why don't people just close the browser window" - many people who use honour-based abuse services are very computer illiterate, don't have time to learn about incognito windows / (Ctrl | Command) + W, and can only snatch computer time here and there. Abusers can look back at the browser history, but if the choice is between being discovered on an honour-based abuse website or the chance that the abuser won't look at the history, the second is clearly superior.
Edit 3 - I really wonder about the three-press shift keyboard shortcut. Real lack of discoverability, and my worry would be that the lack of consistency across sites would lead to situations where people are on non-gov.uk websites and think that keyboard shortcut would work there too. Although I suppose the fact that the first shift press activates the button in some way does tie it to the presence of the button on screen.
Edit 4 - It doesn't seem to be in use on any relevant gov.uk pages. The pilot on the "check for legal aid" pages seems to have ended and it's not on the pages about domestic abuse.
https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/Navigator/s...
It does remind me of "boss keys" that old DOS games used to have.
> An honor killing (American English), honour killing (Commonwealth English), or shame killing is a traditional form of murder in which a person is killed by or at the behest of members of their family or their partner, due to culturally sanctioned beliefs that such homicides are necessary as retribution for the perceived dishonoring of the family by the victim.
> Methods of murdering include stoning, stabbing, beating, burning, beheading, hanging, throat slashing, lethal acid attacks, shooting, and strangulation. Sometimes, communities perform murders in public to warn others in the community of the possible consequences of engaging in what is seen as illicit behavior
> Often, minor girls and boys are selected by the family to act as the murderers, so that the murderer may benefit from the most favorable legal outcome. Boys and sometimes women in the family are often asked to closely control and monitor the behavior of their siblings or other members of the family, to ensure that they do not do anything to tarnish the 'honor' and 'reputation' of the family
> Sharif Kanaana, professor of anthropology at Birzeit University, says that honor killing is: "A complicated issue that cuts deep into the history of Islamic society. .. What the men of the family, clan, or tribe seek control of in a patrilineal society is reproductive power. Women for the tribe were considered a factory for making men. Honor killing is not a means to control sexual power or behavior. What's behind it is the issue of fertility or reproductive power."
> Nighat Taufeeq of the women's resource center Shirkatgah in Lahore, Pakistan says: "It is an unholy alliance that works against women: the killers take pride in what they have done, the tribal leaders condone the act and protect the killers and the police connive the cover-up." The lawyer and human rights activist Hina Jilani says, "The right to life of women in Pakistan is conditional on their obeying social norms and traditions."
> Fareena Alam, editor of a Muslim magazine, writes that honor killings which arise in Western cultures such as Britain are a tactic for immigrant families to cope with the alienating consequences of urbanization. Alam argues that immigrants remain close to the home culture and their relatives because it provides a safety net. She writes that 'In villages "back home", a man's sphere of control was broader, with a large support system. In our cities full of strangers, there is virtually no control over who one's family members sit, talk or work with.'
Hopefully that expands on it. A rotten culture of "family values" that sees women as nothing more than baby factories and keeps them under control at all times, through intimidation, persecution, monitoring, and straight up state-sanctioned killing and blaming of the victim if they try to assert themselves.
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?
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.
https://support.apple.com/guide/personal-safety/how-safety-c...
https://github.com/alphagov/govuk-design-system/discussions/...
+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>
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.
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.
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...
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.