[ux] Tor Browser Usage Survey

[Antonela Debiasi]

The last message formatting was bad. Trying again for a better
plain-text experience :)

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Hi,

During our last dev meeting in Stockholm, we circulated a survey about
Tor Browser Usage[0].

For practical proposes, I split users into two groups based on their
usage frequency[1]: 

1. Recurring users: people who have been using TB always, nearly always
or every day (18 of 29)
2. Occasional users: people who use TB every week or occasionally (11 of 29)

Far from writing the final-guide-to-improve-tor-browser, I'm using this
small dataset as an exercise to opening (and sharing) some questions:

* Recurring users are most political about using Tor Browser. Occasional
users mention "access to censored context" as the main reason for use
for TB. Should we strength this relation with tor browser on our
communications? Should we focus on the critical choice of using Tor when
we communicate about Tor Browser? 

* Not surprisedly, personal privacy and safety are the main value
propositions for using Tor Browser for both groups. Access to blocked
content is the other use for occasional users.

* Both groups have mentioned speed and rendering issues as performance
to-improve items.

* Recurrent users said that CAPTCHAs are painful. Are we doing all that
we can to improve this break browsing experience? Could persistent
features help with this situation?

* One person mentioned that a family member could not tell the
difference between the Tor Browser and Chrome. Should we work on
reinforcing the distinction between browsers? Is good that people
without technical expertise nor particular technical interest can use
Tor Browser as another mainstream browser?

* Last but not least, on extended comments, some people mentioned that
the Tor Browser is improving. That is cool, especially coming from long
term users and insiders.

Top mentioned problems:

* Tor Browser being slow was the top mentioned problem. (7 of 29)
"slower than other browsers"
* Site breakage (6 of 29) "breakage - some sites block tor (explicitly
or implicitly -< google); XSS protection popups are really annoying ->
have to disable it; some features also break websites (FPI, resistFP)"
* Both CAPTCHAs situation and blocked content were mentioned as a
problem. (8 of 29) "This is really not about the browser itself but
about third party policies abt blacklisting Tor traffic; crazy captchas"

Top mentioned requested improvements:

* Calling it performance or latency, respondents are aiming for a faster
Tor Browser experience. (11 of 29) "Browser performance (scrolling)
seems slow. Ideally, this would match FF."
* An ad blocker was mentioned as a critical need. "Add uBlock origin,
seriously!" (4 of 29)

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Here is the raw data[2]. It could not happen without arthuredelstein's
help. Thanks Arthur for your help and support on running this!

A

[0] https://nc.riseup.net/s/wiTk5TR5NBtpZR6
[1] https://www.nngroup.com/articles/everyone-as-users/
[2] https://nc.riseup.net/s/3xEiwqfyNnzwtRG

-- 
Antonela Debiasi
UX Team Lead

@antonela
E2330A6D1EB5A0C8

https://torproject.org

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