Parental controls fail usability test

In a new parental controls study by User Centric, parents were asked to set up parental controls for 4 devices.

FINDINGS
- Failure rates were high: 31% (DVR), 36% (mobile phone), 42% (V-Chip), and 47% (game console). Across all four devices, parents and children had similar failure rates when setting up parental controls. Participants who reported prior experience fared no better than those who had no experience.

- One third of participants failed to set up parental controls across all the devices. This contrasted sharply with the high confidence ratings given by participant; many participants believed they had successfully activated parental controls when they actually had not.

- Several participants failed to set up parental controls because they were unaware that they had to perform an extra step to save and then activate their selection. Parental control interfaces failed to provide sufficient visual cues on whether a specific rating was successfully selected or automatically saved as the current setting.

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