...
- Use their mobile phones very frequently to communicate with others
- Have to deal with sensitive information on a regular basis
- Concerned with Privacy, but not with the technical details of how to be secure
- Concerned about Personal Safety
User Classes
Message Sender
Message Receiver
Task Analysis
General Actions
Task | Goal | Frequency | Effort | Pitfalls | Others Involved | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Manage Contacts Add contact | To ensure the identity (or psudo-identity) of the intended recipient | sometimes | medium |
|
| Indicates that the user | The contact | ||
Communicate Find Public Conversations | To discuss a topic | semi- often | medium | potentially lots of information |
| Expose information | Other people in | ||
Dissociate with a user | To break contact or association with a contact | rarely | fast | Erase evidence of communication | Break contact or association | rarely | easy | unsafe (can't undo) |
|
Group (closed) Conversation Actions
...
Task
...
Goal
...
Frequency
...
Effort
...
Pitfalls
...
Others Involved
...
Join
...
Join a group conversation
...
sometimes
...
medium
...
Requires the controller to add the user to the conversation
...
Remove oneself from a group
...
sometimes
...
easy
...
Unsafe (for security reasons, undo will be impossible).
...
...
Send
...
Send a message to a group
...
often
...
easy
...
Potential to send message to wrong person.
...
The group
...
Receive
...
Receive a message
...
often
...
none
...
...
The group
...
Log
...
Keep a log of messages
...
background
...
none
...
Some users may not want to be logged. Removal must be thorough.
...
Public Conversation Actions
...
Task
...
Goal
...
Frequency
...
Effort
...
Pitfalls
...
Others Involved
General Comments
- Safety is very important--a user should always be certain of the level of privacy they're communicating with
- Need connecting with people to be fairly easy to be adoptable
- Most (if not all) actions will be preformed in private (probably a very clean, quiet environment) (according to the user in the second interview).
- Where possible, tasks will mimic those in other chat applications. Where unique, tasks will include a short help text. In most cases, new users will be taught the basics by the person who introduced them to the application.
- The frequencies are based on estimates given by the user in the second interview.
Interviews
Interview 1
...
Join
...
Join a public conversation
...
sometimes
...
easy
...
...
Leave
...
Remove oneself from a public conversation
...
sometimes
...
easy
...
...
...
Send
...
Send a message to a public conversation
...
often
...
easy
...
Potential to send a private message to a public chat.
...
The receivers
...
Receive
...
Receive a message
...
often
...
none
...
...
The sender
...
Log
...
Keep a log of messages
...
background
...
none
...
Some users may not want to be logged. Removal must be thorough.
...
Private (direct) Conversation Actions
Task | Goal | Frequency | Effort | Pitfalls | Others Involved |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Send | Send a message to another person | often | easy | Potential to send message to wrong person. | The recipient |
Receive | Receive a message | often | none |
| The recipient |
Log | Keep a log of messages | background | none | Some users may not want to be logged. Removal must be thorough. |
|
- Have a secure and anonymous group chat (private to the group).
- Join/leave the group chat.
- Send/receive messages.
- Log the group chat.
- Have a public and anonymous conversation (readable by all).
- Join/leave the conversation.
- Send/receive messages.
- Log the conversation.
- Have a direct, private, and anonymous and secure conversations.
- Send/receive messages.
- Log the conversation.
- Authenticate pseudonyms.
- Find public conversation topics.
- Erase evidence of communication.
Questions
- Have you ever found the need to securely converse with another person?
- Have you ever censored what you were saying to someone because you were worried about privacy?
Interviews
Interview 1
We interviewed multiple users to learn more about how they might value our product.
...
This user works as a consultant and is constantly on the road. It is very important for him to be able to communicate with clients, co-workers, and to his family back at home, and he relies very much on his mobile devices to allow him to stay in touch and coordinate his life. In his line of work he frequently deals with sensitive corporate information. He ends up using two mobile devices -- a secure device dedicated to work, and a personal one for other purposes. He understands the need to keep client information secure but doesn't really understand all of the ways in which using an unsecure insecure device can actually be potentially harmful to his firm and/or himself. He would love to be able to deal with both work and personal tasks from a single application.
...
When discussing secure communication that also hides who you’re talking to, he stated that cloaking who you’re talking to would be a big benefit. It prevents leaking who you associate with, which can give away a lot of information.
TA Feedback.
This is a good start, but there are some big things missing. You don't actually discuss classes of users, just specific interviewees. Your task analysis doesn't seem to be much connected to those interviews, either. For instance, where do public conversations come in? They aren't mentioned anywhere in your user analysis, yet you say that it's a 'semi-often' action.
You also don't seem to really get a good feel for what the tasks your users use to solve your problems, and instead you describe actions that your app will let users take. Don't forget that the next step is to make three separate designs - you shouldn't already have picked one. Think of task analysis as the analysis of tasks that need to be done to solve the problems.
I'd appreciate it if you made these changes, since we'll be working off this document for the whole rest of the project.