Paper Reading #2 - Communicating software agreement content using narrative pictograms

Title:

Communicating software agreement content using narrative pictograms 

References:

Communicating software agreement content using narrative pictograms

Matthew Kay and Michael Terry

CHI EA '10 Proceedings of the 28th of the international conference extended abstracts on Human factors in computing systems

Summary:

This paper is about using pictures to convey the terms if a licensing agreement.  Software agreements are currently text only.  They are usually many pages long, and use language that is difficult for average users to understand.  This paper discusses rules for incorporating images into the agreements to help users understand what they are agreeing to, or potentially give an agreement that is only based on pictures.  The authors believe that developing this method will help users understand the terms of the licensing agreements while not forcing them to learn technical jargon. 

Discussion:

I think that this is a great idea.  Whenever I download new software, whether it is the new version of Itunes or a web-browser to replace IE, the licensing agreements are annoying.  I doubt that I'm the only one that has clicked "I Agree" without reading the terms completely, or even at all.  The average user doesn't want to spend half an hour trying to read the agreement and looking up something for every other sentence.  I think that if images would be incorporated, this would keep the users informed without wasting their time.