Re: [Tails-ux] Results first Tails Server user tests

Susan:
>>> - 1/5 needed some time to understand that the application is hosting a
>>> network service and they had to use another client application to
>>> connect to it.
>>
>> That's a good observation.
>>
>> For most people the name "Tails server" is probably not sufficiently
>> self-explanatory, and if they are used in the client-side Tails model they
>> might not understand what it is or how it works. e.g. they could think it's
>> some sort of server for monitoring and controlling Tails.
>>
>> I wonder how we could make the purpose of "Tails server" clearer to novice users.
>
> I wondered about this too. Maybe I can help with the explanation problem if you can explain what the right mental model should be.

My guess is that people are so much used to be the clients and only the
clients on the Internet that it's harder for them to conceive that they
are be the server here: they are the ones providing services that will
be running in the background and to which others will connect to.

In the case of the Mumble server for example, the alternative experience
that people are probably more familiar with is Skype: you configure a
group call in your Skype client application and others can join the chat
from their Skype client as well. But everybody is doing this from their
usual client Skype application. Here with Tails Server you have to
create a Mumble service using Tails Server and then use the Mumble
client application to connect to it, even when you are the one running
both the client and the server on the same machine.

I'm using Mumble here as an example because group chat is probably the
service that most people are used to with Skype and such. And, just to
be clear, I wish we could propose a better VoIP application that Mumble
(in terms of UX) but that's the only one we found so far...

To help explaining this I thought that we could add an informative
placeholder to the empty screen when Tails Server is started for the
first time and no service is configured yet. I proposed the following
paragraphs:

« Tails Server allows you to create online services to which other
people can connect through Tor. For example, you can create a Mumble
service to organize group calls.

Click '+' to create a new service. »

And also thought that maybe adding an image of several clients
connecting to Tails Server would help.