Patterns are based on scientific sources.
| Name | Separating Content |
| Sources | (Egelman, 2009) |
| Synonyms | None |
| Context | When a critical warning is displayed, the website should be distorted or hidden. When contextual indicators are used to make trust decisions about which website to visit, the indicators should be presented before the user views the content of the website that was chosen. |
| Problem | Users often let the “look and feel” of the website determine their level of trust, often to the detriment of unbiased trust indicators. |
| Solution | Indicators should distort or not display the destination website such that the look and feel are not taken into account when the user is asked to make a trust decision. |
| Examples | None |
| Implementation | In cases where a critical warning is about to be displayed, distort or hide the original website such that the user’s focus is on the warning message. In cases where a contextual indicator is to be displayed, display it before the content of the website that it represents. For instance, this can be accomplished by annotating hyperlinks or by providing popups during mouse-overs. |
| Consequences | When a website is presented alongside a trust indicator, the user may use the look and feel of the website to determine the veracity of the trust indicator. Since many users are unaware of how easy it is to design professionally looking fraudulent websites, they may take the design quality into account when choosing to ignore a warning or contextual indicator. |
| Dependencies | None |
| Relationships | [Active Warnings] [Warn When Unsafe] [Noticable Contextual Indicators] |
| Principles | [Indentifiablity] [Clarity] [Trusted Path] |
| Guidelines | None |
| Check lists | None |
| Use cases | None |
| Tags | Separating Content, Active Warnings, Noticable Contextual Indicators, Fail Safety |
| Log history | [12/21/2015]: Added to repository |
Egelman, S., 2009. Trust me: Design patterns for constructing trustworthy trust indicators. ProQuest.