Re: [Tails-ux] [Tails-project] Report: CryptoRave 2018

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Author: sajolida
Date:  
To: Tails user experience & user interface design
Subject: Re: [Tails-ux] [Tails-project] Report: CryptoRave 2018
intrigeri:
> intrigeri:
> Here we go. I'll file/update tickets and blueprints as needed once
> some basic level of agreement is reached here.


Thanks for the detailed report.

> * it's too hard to install software without APT (e.g. with PIP)
>
> → that's a power-user thing; I think we should better support power
> users in general as these people have good chances to become
> contributors, trainers, advocates and to support their local
> community in using Tails; I suspect shipping a config file for PIP
> (so it uses the Tor proxy) would help; and/or document somewhere in
> our FAQ "if your additional software cannot connect to the network,
> wrap it with torsocks"


It depends on what you mean by "power user"...

When talking to investigative journalists who use Tails for their work,
then use software that seems very obscure to me and they could probably
have even more options outside of Debian.
Cf. https://tails.boum.org/blueprint/interviews/#Claudia

I also remember other data freaks asking about data visualization tools
written in JS, data scrapping tools using some scripting language, etc.
Cf. the collaboration that Tactical Tech proposed us and which also
included installing software using other package managers than APT.

These users are a different kind of power user than me and most Tails
contributors. There might not be a lot of them but maybe they are
important to us despite being a few.

> * default keyboard layout should be US International
>
> → interesting! Indeed that layout is better for an international
> audience… but it is slightly different from the en_US one, i.e.
> it does more than adding stuff. I'm not sure how much it breaks
> habits for en_US users. This would be an interesting research topic.


GNOME has two different US keyboard with "international" in their name:

- US, alternative international
- US, international with dead keys

Which one are you referring to?

I'm attaching the GNOME layouts for these two + the default US.

I don't really what you mean by "it does more than adding stuff".

But I'm not sure it's an issue that's worth spending a lot of time on.

> * setting up OTR is hard
>
> → I think improving this could be a SHOULD criteria for #8573.
>
> * Tails is amnesic
>
> → this user did not know about persistence. I'll let our UX / tech
> writing people draw whatever conclusions they want about it :)


I realized only very recently that persistence is not mentioned neither
on our home page nor on our about page. But we'll work on this with
Simply Secure this summer as part of #9814.

> * Impossible to go back to Tails Greeter after login.
>
> → Sadly, that's hardly actionable without knowing what exact
> setting(s) the user would like to change after login. Hopefully it
> is about networking and will be addressed some day by the revamp of
> network bootstrapping.


Yeap.

> * Persistence is hard to configure
>
> → not very actionable but good to know!


We could definitely give some love to persistence in general.
Starting with stuff we can do with no coding budget:

- Explaining it better (#9814)
- Rephrasing the current interface (#10048)

And then I have more plans if you send me an engineer :)

> * I miss the Windows camouflage
>
> → well, we hear this from time to time, but IMO not enough to add
> this back to our roadmap given the big cost of creating +
> maintaining this option


Agreed.

--
sajolida