UX meeting 20190425 0502

Digging into the Source UI

Attending 25 April: @ninavizz, @eloquence, @harrislapiroff, @creviera, @redshiftzero, John, David, Kev, Kushal?

Attending 02 May: Nina, Erik, Harris, David (PyCon travel day)

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Agenda + Discussed, 02 May:

Nina created a GDoc to provide discussion context & meeting goals. It's open to commenting, and commenting is welcomed to facilitate async contributions/thoughts from folks!

Notes

General Banter

Harris:

• Branding all looks very professional
• Mixed feelings on the fingerprint in updated Codename widget
  • Not sure how much it conveys it is something you need to write down
  • Could this be mis-interpreted to be a PGP fingerprint?
  • Wants symbology to speak more to the widget's purpose

Erik (on Codename widget):

• Fingerprint has ambiguity for me
• I have a fundamental problem with the use of the word codename
  • Codename to me communicates "I should share this with others!"
  • "Codename" is unfamiliar language, and suggests something you should or could share with journalists
  • I know you don’t like “Passphrase” Nina, but to me it fits the bill more appropriately
  • Nina, more ok w/ word considering provided context. Still linguistically unfamiliar use of English to much of North America (sorry, we’re not the most educated country) & a less awkward word choice may be preferred. Nitty detail, tho.
    • Secret Username (?)
      • Can/should we just call the spade a spade?
    • Secret Codename
      • Or should “Codename” be restricted to Newsroom-experience nomenclature, only? This could actually help journos understand SD with greater clarity, and help them guide Source users who have questions.
    • Access Name
    • Whisper Name
    • System Alias
      • Literal—but could it suggest sharing as encouraged?
    • What would kids use? Kids use highly simple language, and love secret/coded communication.
    • Sounds like a workshop may be in order?

Footer

Erik:

Adding language about "this newsroom" or customization

• Don't want to offer false sense of security via this being open source software... like, someone could totally install this on an AWS cloud instance. We make reccs, we don’t govern.
• Multi-file uploads is a good opportunity

Strongly disagrees that language in today’s footer is as problematic as Nina believes.

David:

• Threat model is adversary, we do want users to be careful
• People don't know about nutrition, as analogous to non-technical/hacker knowledge of risk using digital applications and internet

Customizability—David VERY worried about this. Nina +1 to that wrt free-form customization, but believes structured customization through a page in the Admin experience, could be a good & lovely thing. David’s top-of-mind thoughts around how some may customize it (best example: “Ed Snowden personally coded this, so you know it’s safe!”) were precious. Yeah, can’t be letting customers do that!

Codename Widget

Erik:

• Fingerprint has ambiguity for me
• I have a fundamental problem with the use of the word codename
• Codename to me communicates "I should share this with others!"
• "Codename" is unfamiliar language, and suggests something you should or could share with journalists

Everyone

• Lively discussion; not everyone liked light-on-light treatment
• More lively discussion, around use of “Codename” language (summarized, above)
• Postmortem Nina note: “Codename” is/was familiar language to me, from my American childhood. Micah is much younger than me, and I believe came up with it—which adds to a forming hypothesis it could just be an American pop-culture thing… ubiquitous across generations (at least Gen-X to Millenial, and likely down to Boomers), but still restricted to those of us who grew-up with Cracker Jacks and Sesame Street (eg: American pop culture). Per Erik’s unfamiliarity with it (German childhood), and my own reflection on the word’s origins.
  • TL;DR, this adds urgency to renaming the feature to me, for making the UI more usable to a global audience.

Torthings Interstitial

Get Mickael's perspective on the interstitial?

• We only have anecdotal insights from training, wrt the Tor things.
• Inexpensive user testing, ohai! :)

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Agenda + Discussed, 25th Apr:

• Design Review:
  • Source UI:
    • Tor things & user messaging. The purple banner has not been cutting the mustard, per field observations of David and Kev. How truly critical is it that users adhere to its advisement? Alternatives, or experiential reinforcements? Hoping Kev, Mikael, and David can join for this discussion. 😸
    • Updated branding applied, basic usability updates made w/in existing experience architecture

Everything below, planned but the hour ended

• 2019 Roadmap: Where da users? :( #SadUXKidPanda
  • Pls to get Source users on the 2019 Roadmap?
  • Who ARE the Source users?
    • Who is FPF targeting in its established threat models and product placement?
    • Who are Source users, in reality—as a likely diversion from who we're targeting?
    • How might we feel about that delta?
• Discuss:
  • Unlikely, given packed agenda items, above... buuut
    • Evolving the SD brand: Next Steps
    • Threat Model Co-Creation workshops with different user groups (via SimplySecure Slack)?
• Been Readin' + Shoutouts:
  • Soraya at EFF shared their internal and Pentagram-delivered brand documentation with me; siked to share, internally (check your emails)!
  • Neat article on LTR L10n stuff, shared on Slack by Harris!
  • UX Design Principles: a foundation terrific read to get more insight into what spins the gears in a ux practicioner's head, and how non-practitioners can get their ux game on!

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Notes from last week

• Tor things
  • People rarely notice purple bar
  • Historically when there have been Firefox exploits, its done through Javascript

General

• Harris:

  • Parity with securedrop.org, nice!

• Everyone:

  • If a user goes to a regular website vs onion service, does the circuit automagically change?
  • Users still have cookies, back/forward
  • What happens if a user just closes the Tor browser? If it's just as
  • Harris: closing Tor browser does the same thing as clicking new identity
  • Consensus: Quit action path of less resistance; users may have other windows open?

Footer

• Have newsrooms customize there? (Kev)

• Erik—uncomfortable with orgs putting inaccuracies there

• (everyone echoes Erik’s sentiment)

• Nina: we could easily control what goes there, but would require whole Admin Experience project

Erik:

• Emphasizing not a cloud service point has value

• Has enough value to be in the footer?

• How newsroom identity is surfaced is its own discussion

• "SecureDrop is software this organization runs on servers we own and maintain"

Erik:

This is not going through a 3rd party, it is going directly to us

David:

• People don't know how servers work or when/how they're used

Kev: This is not an enforcable statement

Second line of text:

• Generally having more info there and source guidelines is a good idea

Notes from this week

General Banter

Harris:

• Branding all looks very professional
• Mixed feelings on the fingerprint in updated Codename widget
  • Not sure how much it conveys it is something you need to write down
  • Could this be mis-interpreted to be a PGP fingerprint?
  • Wants symbology to speak more to the widget's purpose

Erik (on Codename widget):

• Fingerprint has ambiguity for me
• I have a fundamental problem with the use of the word codename
  • Codename to me communicates "I should share this with others!"
  • "Codename" is unfamiliar language, and suggests something you should or could share with journalists
  • I know you don’t like “Passphrase” Nina, but to me it fits the bill more appropriately
  • Nina, more ok w/ word considering provided context. Still linguistically unfamiliar use of English to much of North America (sorry, we’re not the most educated country) & a less awkward word choice may be preferred. Nitty detail, tho.
    • Secret Username (?)
      • Can/should we just call the spade a spade?
    • Secret Codename
      • Or should “Codename” be restricted to Newsroom-experience nomenclature, only? This could actually help journos understand SD with greater clarity, and help them guide Source users who have questions.
    • Access Name
    • Whisper Name
    • System Alias
      • Literal—but could it suggest sharing as encouraged?
    • What would kids use? Kids use highly simple language, and love secret/coded communication.
    • Sounds like a workshop may be in order?

Footer

Erik:

Adding language about "this newsroom" or customization

• Don't want to offer false sense of security via this being open source software... like, someone could totally install this on an AWS cloud instance. We make reccs, we don’t govern.
• Multi-file uploads is a good opportunity

Strongly disagrees that language in today’s footer is as problematic as Nina believes.

David:

• Threat model is adversary, we do want users to be careful
• People don't know about nutrition, as analogous to non-technical/hacker knowledge of risk using digital applications and internet

Customizability—David VERY worried about this. Nina +1 to that wrt free-form customization, but believes structured customization through a page in the Admin experience, could be a good & lovely thing. David’s top-of-mind thoughts around how some may customize it (best example: “Ed Snowden personally coded this, so you know it’s safe!”) were precious. Yeah, can’t be letting customers do that!

Codename Widget

Erik:

• Fingerprint has ambiguity for me
• I have a fundamental problem with the use of the word codename
• Codename to me communicates "I should share this with others!"
• "Codename" is unfamiliar language, and suggests something you should or could share with journalists

Everyone

• Lively discussion; not everyone liked light-on-light treatment
• More lively discussion, around use of “Codename” language (summarized, above)
• Postmortem Nina note: “Codename” is/was familiar language to me, from my American childhood. Micah is much younger than me, and I believe came up with it—which adds to a forming hypothesis it could just be an American pop-culture thing… ubiquitous across generations (at least Gen-X to Millenial, and likely down to Boomers), but still restricted to those of us who grew-up with Cracker Jacks and Sesame Street (eg: American pop culture). Per Erik’s unfamiliarity with it (German childhood), and my own reflection on the word’s origins.
  • TL;DR, this adds urgency to renaming the feature to me, for making the UI more usable to a global audience.

Torthings Interstitial

Get Mickael's perspective on the interstitial?

• We only have anecdotal insights from training, wrt the Tor things.
• Inexpensive user testing, ohai! :)