[ux] Tor UX Team Vision Brainstorm

[Georg Koppen]

Pili Guerra:
> Hi everyone, 
> 
> Here is the write up from our UX Vision Brainstorm last week.
> 
> We started off as usual with a discussion on the need for a UX Team at Tor. Here is what we feel the UX Team’s role is as well why it is important to have a UX Team within Tor:
> 
> Helping to develop usable tools that people can and want to use, to create a positive feedback loop of more users == increased anonymity set for each of these users
> Making it easier for new users to adopt and use Tor as an essential step in scaling Tor
> Helping users to make the most out of using Tor
> Advocating for putting the user at the center of our development processes
> 
> There were a lot of great comments from everyone which I think can be condensed into the 4 statements above, but feel free to add in any which I may have missed out!
> 
> Next we went through the challenges the UX team faces which are mainly around user understanding (both for our team to understand our users and for the users to understand our products) as well as user adoption:
> 
> UX is the difference between using and not using Tor for most people - In the past UX has been a barrier which is steadily being lowered
> Designing our own proceses of work
> Developing a fine-grained understanding of users' mental models when using tor browser
> The constant struggle between having the most secure browser and having the most usable browser. Is it possible to have both?
> Potentially “degraded” experience for users when using a “normal” browser versus Tor Browser, e.g increased latency, broken functionality on websites, increased number of captchas
> The sheer number of use-cases and user mental models/personas to cater for within Tor Browser
> 
> Although we did not explicitly discuss this, from these problems we identified a number of opportunities the UX Team can develop in future: 
> 
> Making it more politically difficult to restrict use of TB by increasing the user base of 'ordinary people’ - this should be a joint effort with the Community Team
> Measuring and Documenting broken functionality when using Tor Browser and educating organisations running web services on making their services more Tor-Friendly
> Finding ways for more people to use and contribute to the Tor network, e.g
> Developing re-usable application libraries to make it easier for application developers to use the Tor network
> Improving the experience of setting up a Tor Relay
> 
> Finally we discussed the ideal state of the UX Team in 2 years time. During the past few years, at a high level, we have been working on bridging the gap between our users and the software development process as well as developing a coherent visual language for people to recognise the Tor Project. To get us started on thinking about the next 2 years, Antonela shared with us her vision for the ideal UX Team composition in future:  https://share.riseup.net/#i9JssTxjvZICU0cSL8ch3A <https://share.riseup.net/#i9JssTxjvZICU0cSL8ch3A> 
> Based on current demand, by the end of the next 2 year period, we would want to have dedicated UX teams (comprising of a designer, researcher and product manager) for each of our products. 

What are "products" here? I guess Tor Browser is one, but is there more
at the current point? Is the website a "product" e.g.? Assuming "yes",
the idea would then be to have 6 ux people, 3 for Tor Browser and 3 for,
say, our web presence and those 6 would not overlap. Or did I
misunderstand the dedicated UX teams ideas?

Georg

-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: signature.asc
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 833 bytes
Desc: OpenPGP digital signature
URL: <http://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/ux/attachments/20190304/3b08bb04/attachment-0001.sig>