I kindly direct you to alarm fatigue[1], banner blindness[2], and inattentional blindness[3].
The TL;DR is that the more often and worthless a piece of information is presented, the more likely people are going to ignore it either deliberately or habitually.
The flavor text for Incognito Mode pops up every single time an Incognito window is opened and it is practically inconsequential, thus it is worthless information. People will not read it, and you should not assume people will.
It is the fault of the Chrome(ium) designers for presenting information in a way people will ignore; we've known this ever since the first guy who would insta-close every single error message while the tech support agent on the phone with him is desperately begging him to read out WTF the error says.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alarm_fatigue
These things are precisely what I was thinking about, though from the opposite end. I.e. One can't on hand argue it's reasonable to sue until the browser provides even more warning overload about how to every word in the interface should be legally interpreted to insure nobody can ever come to any other conclusion about what it might mean and then on the other hand say the current lightweight presentation of such information on this feature is too much information overload to be helpful. If it were something like a 100 page EULA or something I could see how Chromium was acting with malicious intent to make people not understand but we're talking about 3 short sentences and 6 couple word bullet points.
> The flavor text for Incognito Mode pops up every single time an Incognito window is opened and it is practically inconsequential, thus it is worthless information.
This misses the point made, almost to the point of malice. The expectation isn't that the user will read the message on the 87th launch and come to an epiphany from the added value of displaying it every time - it's that, regardless of when a particular person first opened incognito on that computer to see what happens, that message will always appear for them regardless if it has been displayed before. I.e. the value for each individual is in the first time launch, but the product guarantees every individual is always getting a first time launch, even on a shared profile.
> It is the fault of the Chrome(ium) designers for presenting information in a way people will ignore
I suppose this is where it leaves the initial discussion about this being an issue of tech literacy and enters the realm of pure opinion on what one should be able to blame others for. I could similarly argue it's the bank's/credit card companies' fault that the number in my account kept going up every time I spent money, as it wasn't my responsibility to notice the number sign in front, the overdraft messages were information fatigue, etc. Since that's a matter of opinion it's neither "right" nor "wrong"... but the judge would probably have a solid laugh if I tried to sued for compensation about it.
When filing a lawsuit the question isn't the UX question "is there any way one of billions of users could misinterpret this" (which is still usually fine to leave n>0 anyways) it's "does this party hold a reasonable amount of responsibility for the damages claimed" not just "can anyone have ever misinterpreted the meaning".
Welcome to Incognito Mode
-A list of details that say why this mode actually doesn’t make you incognito
-Actually it doesn’t hide your identity at all
-Look, we’ve written some bullet points, why would you expect incognito mode to make you incognito?
-You dummies, the internet doesn’t work that way
The problem isn’t that my bullet points are too long, or alarm fatigue or anything like that. It is that we need them in the first place, to correct the mis-understanding caused by the name.
Sure, if the bar is:
"can anyone have ever misinterpreted the meaning".
That’s too high. But, not every word has equal weight. The name should not be misleading in the first place.
