Re: [tor-dev] Tor meets real users
Hi, Andrew Lewman wrote (18 May 2011 19:37:28 GMT) : I like what TAILS has done here. They strip out all of the configuration options from Vidalia, so you can't click to change any settings. FWIW, the Settings dialog is nevertheless reachable, in Tails, from the menu one get by right-clicking the Vidalia taskbar icon. Many users sometimes need it to workaround so-called Internet access with filtered egress, and our upcoming bridges support needs it as well. Bye, -- intrigeri intrig...@boum.org | GnuPG key @ https://gaffer.ptitcanardnoir.org/intrigeri/intrigeri.asc | OTR fingerprint @ https://gaffer.ptitcanardnoir.org/intrigeri/otr.asc | So what? ___ tor-dev mailing list tor-dev@lists.torproject.org https://lists.torproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/tor-dev
Re: [tor-dev] Tor meets real users
On Fri, 13 May 2011 00:25:00 -0700 Lucky Green shamr...@cypherpunks.to wrote: Easily solved. A download page should be workflow based. You can lay it out as columns or successive pages. Example: We have this, sort of, at https://www.torproject.org/download/download-easy The first issue is the UE problem, meaning page design bug, of giving the user choices inside the default work flow of having to select a particular product, such as tpo/torbrowser. There should only be one default choice per OS. If we used javascript to magically detect their preferred language, then we could default the page to that, for their OS too. The other issue has too sub-issues. The first sub-issue is that users can be whiny, as they are here. How are those users with their shiny MacOS laptops getting OS updates? How large are those OS updates? How big was that last iTunes update? Oh, those updates are larger than 24 MB? Assume for this set of users, everything is possibly not legally obtained. They swap cdroms and usb drives around. They may not be able to legally buy the software in their home country. The second sub-issue (only useful to know after having figured out the first) is which download options to offer as part of the regular work flow. http/our download manager/BT are common, but that doesn't necessary make them the correct choices for Tor. I was thinking of thandy/secure updater here. They download one tiny thandy-stub program, which then does the rest via https or bittorrent. None of them had pgp installed, and therefore no way to verify the .asc and zip file. That is to be expected. (And I am confident was expected by Andrew). Yes, expected. Most of them figured out to click inside the resulting folder and start the 'start tor browser' program. For all of the macs, the tbb didn't start. The people had to restart the system and then clicking on 'start tor browser' worked as expected. Bug of some sort. (Possibly in the installer not prompting the user for the required reboot). It's a bug. There is no installer for TBB by design. It should just unzip and work. You are striving for user notification of actions in 3/10th of a second. Anything more than that and the user will perceive lag. Note that 3/10 of a second is plenty of time to load a stub that reads Please wait, Tor is loading. Take much longer after that notice is presented to the user for the final app to load and you'll want some visual indicator of progress, such as a spinning ball. Something optional that loads the first time, with a check box that says 'never load this message again' would also work. Again, multiple issues here. Clearly the browser is loading too slowly, which may be inherent to the browser. If so - and if it is not possible to make the browser load faster by stripping it down - you are using the wrong default browser. Obvious area to explore here is how fast the users' regular browsers are loading. Must be faster than tbb firefox or they wouldn't have been able to start their own browsers in the interim. Figure out why their default browsers are loading faster and go from there. This is firefox, stripped down already. I think the problem here isn't that firefox was a dog on OSX, because it loaded fast on the window's systems, but rather they didn't even know a browser was going to load. UE design bug. The user should only be presented with UI elements that the user needs to interact with to complete the task. Anything else should be buried in a Tools (think Chrome) menu or Tray icon. If what you are loading is a new browser, there shouldn't even be a Tray icon, but an additional button or sub-menu in the browser. I like what TAILS has done here. They strip out all of the configuration options from Vidalia, so you can't click to change any settings. The Tor Project would do well to not ADHD its activities into fixing all security ills of this world, such as email encryption, full disk encryption, or how to secure data once it leaves the exit node. If not us, then who? ;) Yes, I agree, but users invariably ask us about this stuff because we all use it daily. We do not know how to achieve this goal given the present state of the art in computer science. Well, I look at TAILS and Haven as two anonymous OSes that make strides towards this. Anonymous and mostly-secure by default enforce the 'power of the defaults'. And yes, your comments are always welcome. -- Andrew pgp 0x74ED336B ___ tor-dev mailing list tor-dev@lists.torproject.org https://lists.torproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/tor-dev
Re: [tor-dev] Tor meets real users
On 2011-05-12 07:59, Andrew Lewman wrote: A short while ago, I did a training for some activists from a country that is hostile to the Internet. These people were some of the more technical people from their community. There was a mix of Windows and OS X laptops in the session. English was their third language, for added fun. I walked them through finding tor browser bundle, downloading it, verifying it, unzipping it, and starting it. Here was the first problem. They couldn't find tbb on the download page. Their comments were that all these files and releases on the page were confusing. They wanted just one thing to look at, pick their operating system, and go. And they wanted the one thing to automatically detect their language preferences for tbb. Easily solved. A download page should be workflow based. You can lay it out as columns or successive pages. Example: What is your OS? (pre-selected based on the browser string)- drop down list - download link. For the main recommended product only, alternative versions should not be suggested, but be available on a drill-down page. See next comment. (You will also want an index page containing all downloadable versions, but that page should be linked from the bottom of the download page. For alternative versions of our product, click here) I ended up pointing them at tpo/torbrowser, which they also thought was confusing. The aforementioned desires weren't satisfied on this page, but at least they could find their preferred language. They all commented that back home, a 24MB file was too big, and can't they get it via bittorrent or some other piecemeal way? A 24mb file would take hours to download. This is one of those rare situations where two entirely unrelated issues combine to confuse even some of the more experienced product managers. The first issue is the UE problem, meaning page design bug, of giving the user choices inside the default work flow of having to select a particular product, such as tpo/torbrowser. There should only be one default choice per OS. The other issue has too sub-issues. The first sub-issue is that users can be whiny, as they are here. How are those users with their shiny MacOS laptops getting OS updates? How large are those OS updates? How big was that last iTunes update? Oh, those updates are larger than 24 MB? Granted, how users obtain other software is a follow-up question the PM must ask in this situation to either learn how to best adjust user expectation or learn which distribution mechanism to emulate. The second sub-issue (only useful to know after having figured out the first) is which download options to offer as part of the regular work flow. http/our download manager/BT are common, but that doesn't necessary make them the correct choices for Tor. None of them had pgp installed, and therefore no way to verify the .asc and zip file. That is to be expected. (And I am confident was expected by Andrew). Most of them figured out to click inside the resulting folder and start the 'start tor browser' program. For all of the macs, the tbb didn't start. The people had to restart the system and then clicking on 'start tor browser' worked as expected. Bug of some sort. (Possibly in the installer not prompting the user for the required reboot). As tbb was starting up, nearly all of them clicked on 'start tor browser' one to three times more, because they didn't see anything starting up. In fact, it was starting, it just wasn't instantaneous. I worry about forcing a splash screen that announces I'm using Tor! on the screen, but at the same time, it would let users know that tbb is starting. You are striving for user notification of actions in 3/10th of a second. Anything more than that and the user will perceive lag. Note that 3/10 of a second is plenty of time to load a stub that reads Please wait, Tor is loading. Take much longer after that notice is presented to the user for the final app to load and you'll want some visual indicator of progress, such as a spinning ball. Once vidalia started, no one waited for tbb firefox to start, but rather started their own browser and tried to use it. Once tbb firefox started up, in some cases, minutes later, they were confused. Why didn't tbb firefox start right away instead of this useless vidalia control panel? Again, multiple issues here. Clearly the browser is loading too slowly, which may be inherent to the browser. If so - and if it is not possible to make the browser load faster by stripping it down - you are using the wrong default browser. Obvious area to explore here is how fast the users' regular browsers are loading. Must be faster than tbb firefox or they wouldn't have been able to start their own browsers in the interim. Figure out why their default browsers are loading faster and go from there. A few of them felt the need to explore the vidalia control panel since we showed it to them. As if to say,
