Hi all,
Usability of most, if not all, XMPP clients has been subpar compared to similar
commercial software in the area of instant messaging and real-time
communication. At FOSDEM there were some nice talks about the general topic of
usability and design in the Open Source Design devroom [0]. One talk in
particular, highlighted the issue of good usability design when it comes to
open source software projects and provided suggestions how this could be
improved [1] in open source communities.
I think, what we call can agree here, is that we ideally want usable [2]
implementations of the XMPP protocol and its extensions. All RFCs must contain
security considerations near the end [3]. A similar rule for XEPs can be found
can be found in XEP-0001 [4]. This requirement raises the awareness of security
as one main issue in protocol design and their implementation, and causes
authors to consider these issues early in the progress. This leads to more
secure protocols, and more secure implementations of these protocols.
To improve the overall usability of XMPP software, I want authors to consider
how the protocols they design might be implemented, and how their protocol
influences the usability. Some examples for this are:
* providing guidelines to what terms to use for certain things the protocol
introduces, e.g. XEP-0319 could recommend “Idle since” or “last active at” as
possible phrases to use when presenting the time to the user
* defining that for MIX channels, the primary name of a channel in the UI
should be the roster item name of the bookmark, as it is user editable, and
provide recommendations what value to use as default
* providing recommendations how to handle end-to-end crypto (i.e. OMEMO) use
cases, like key verification, trust management, or visual assurance for the
user that the current chat is encrypted
Adding the mandatory “Security Considerations” section to RFCs/XEPs improved
the security a lot. I suggest adding a mandatory “Usability Considerations” to
XEPs, even if some XEPs will just say “This protocol provides no
recommendations to usability.” or something like that.
While I certainly don’t want all implementations ending up looking the same,
using the same colour scheme, or visual design, a common user experience across
XMPP software sounds like a laudable goal. It should be easy to switch between
clients for a user.
We shortly discussed this in today’s Council meeting [5], but due to limited
time it was recommended to bring this to the list for wider discussion. So,
here we are.
Cheers,
Tobi
[0] https://fosdem.org/2017/schedule/track/open_source_design/
<https://fosdem.org/2017/schedule/track/open_source_design/>
[1] https://fosdem.org/2017/schedule/event/osd_when_cultures_clash/
<https://fosdem.org/2017/schedule/event/osd_when_cultures_clash/>
[2] https://www.w3.org/WAI/intro/usable <https://www.w3.org/WAI/intro/usable>
[3] https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc7322#section-4.8.5
<https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc7322#section-4.8.5>
[4] http://xmpp.org/extensions/xep-0001.html#security
<http://xmpp.org/extensions/xep-0001.html#security>
[5] http://logs.xmpp.org/council/2017-02-08#16:33:36
<http://logs.xmpp.org/council/2017-02-08#16:33:36>
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