[guardian-dev] Help please! Human factors of privacy tools.

Bernard Tyers - ei8fdb ei8fdb at ei8fdb.org
Wed Apr 24 12:45:50 EDT 2013


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Hello nice Guardian Project people,

Tl;dr: I'm offering 4-5 months worth of a reasonably privacy/crypto savvy HCI researchers time to carry out research for a MSc dissertation about usability of privacy enhancing software, and the effect their UIs have on people's idea of how they work.


Seeing as I am going to be asking for a favour, I should give some information about me.

My background is: electronics engineering, network and systems admin, then telecoms engineer (mobile networks - packet network mainly and some voice...yes also legal interception and packet inspection equipment, but I'm not proud).

2 years ago I moved career to the UX industry, my interest is HCISEC - Human Computer Interaction in SECurity and privacy - PETs (Privacy Enhancing Tools), security, encryption tools and why people, who should use them, do not use them.

I define "people who should use them" as human rights activists, investigative journalists, people in countries whose government are oppressive. 

I am doing a masters in human computer systems, and it's coming to the time to start planning my dissertation. My chosen topic (very generally) is: "Usable security and its impact on mental models and trust." Over the next few days I want to focus this better. If you'd like to know more about mental models, lemme know..

So to my request: I have 4-5 months (beginning from May) to carry out a HCISEC related human factors focused project.

I can find a subject myself, but I would like to do some work on an area that could lead to some useful research/provide input to making these tools better, from a user point of view. Is there a question you'd love to see answered? Is there some area of a tool that needs some research?

I will also be looking for participants to take part in research - again I am very conscience of the scenarios where these tools are used, and the need to maintain anonymity and privacy. I will be anonymising all research, asking for the minimum information and am happy to carry out communications via secure communications tools. I would appreciate support from users of security and privacy tools.

At the end, all research will be released and available for use by the security/privacy community.


If I don't come up with a PETs related topic for the dissertation, thats ok too - I still want to volunteer my mad l33t HCI sk1llz for your work. 

I think your tools could benefit from some usability testing to validate current designs, particularly Orbot/Orweb and Gibberbot. I'd also like to offer my mobile telecoms technical knowledge for any projects you'd think it'd be helpful with. 

I know you guys know it's important to make these applications easy to use (otherwise why build them!?), but you've got a lot of work on your hands already, and HCI isn't your speciality. I am interested in helping you guys with the human part of it. 

At the risk of teaching you to suck eggs, if you are interested in learning more, I can recommend the "Security and Usability: Designing Secure Systems that People Can Use" book by Lorrie Faith Crannor and also the SOUPS Conference (http://cups.cs.cmu.edu/soups/2013/).

I look forward to some feedback (on or off list).

thanks,
Bernard

- --------------------------------------
Bernard / bluboxthief / ei8fdb

IO91XM / www.ei8fdb.org

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