== UX - User Stories - Who are Tor users?
Initially we were gonna do personas, but we haven't made them yet, so we'll be sharing user stories
There is a lot of information about users right now, and I would like to organize that in a way that we can make personas
=== Personas: (a tool to communicate to other teams what we're doing, the people we're working & designing for)
=== Aim for the session: find patterns in our users - who are these people, what are their realities/contexts - and how can we make these into personas?
S: We've seen a need to have more personal narratives talking about positive use cases - we want these stories to come from the people experiencing these things (as long as they can share safely)
=== Use case stories:
- ppl living in Iran, using Tor for censorship circumvention - not necessarily activists, just ppl who want to get online
- this feels like a common scenario - average people who just want to use the internet, twitter, blocked sites
A: Yeah, these feel like the big uses of Tor... and these people are not necessarily technical, not super users - just ppl wanting to use Youtube. - And for these people (censored), they often have the hardest onboarding experience to get online!! We want to make this easier for them - also ppl looking for privacy
S: I think there are about 3 different categories that ppl fall into: Protection against... - censorship - more specific : what do you do after you get online? - tracking - surveillance
P: When are we going to make them, and where are the people coming from? - are personas going to be based on region, or based on use case (i.e. activist, journalist, general, etc)
A: Diversity needs to be taken into consideration - region, pronoun usage... we're answering a political question, so we need to keep that in mind
S: We also need to consider keeping things simple (at least at first) - Start with regular internet user in different countries, then activists in different countries, then abuse survivors in multiple countries...
A: categories in mind: Activist, Journalist, Citizen... - we also need to think about how diverse we're gonna go in terms of technical backgrounds - super users, normal users, etc
- we're finding patterns in users so we can tell their stories efficiently
- the number of ppl using Tor just for fun is much lower than the number of people who use Tor because they need it
- we have a lot of this research already, but we want to establish a framework to use in future research, and also to create the actual personas...
- designing the personas to look like real people... with genders, languages, families, ages, hobbies, jobs...
- we had a family use case come in, a dad with daughters... they want their daughters to be able to search for private things safely
- a gay Colombian boy with religious parents, wanting to meet LGTBQ+ friends online without outing himself to his family
- we also have domestic violence cases
- we have been meeting real people and hearing their real stories! We want to share this while protecting their identities. We want people to connect with these people.
- let's go deep on these bios!
- making your own circuit to avoid tracking on your own phone
=== So, categories to break down:
Role
- journalist, activist, researcher, citizen, politician, government, law enforcement, etc...
Tech level
- super user?
- tech novice?
Mindset - Mission Alignment - Knowledge & Background
- comfort with technology, understanding of their own political context
- is this part of tech level or context?
- understanding of general topics - understanding that you need privacy online, even if you don't know how to use Tor or encryption or anything
- philosophy, guiding principle...
Location
- defines context of infrastructure - access to internet - speed, reliability, physical location limitations... laptop v mobile... price of internet
- online versus offline communities
- we can use OONI reports to find this info
- people using Tor at school
Risk level
- what happens if Tor doesn't work, or if the person doesn't have Tor? What's at stake?
Motivation
- what is their primary use of Tor? Cirvumention, web hosting tool (onion services)... Tails? What do you actually do once you're on Tor?
Devices
- you do different things on different devices... want Youtube on phone, but something else on laptop...
- how much RAM do their devices have? What OS are people using?
How they found out about Tor, and how they learned to use it...
- this can be very helpful in learning how we can educate new people
- are these people connected to other Tor users?
Community involvement
- are people involved in Tor communities? How did they find out about Tor? How do they use Tor in their communities? How long do they continue use Tor?
- political contexts? (does this belong in this topic?)
Language
- !!!
Level of Trust
- does the person trust Tor?
- does the person trust their government?
- does the person trust their ISP? Their cell phone provider?
==== Next Steps:
- start by listing these things, find which stories match with each other... find common topics.
- figure out how we're going to research this - how do we find out how much ppl trust Tor Project?
- draw in info from academic papers
- use demographic info that we've already collected
- take info from Metrics - what countries, how long ppl use Tor... use Metrics to validate the things we're talking about
- take info from Firefox research
- take info from User Advocate
- take stories from Tor Blog
- List things
- Decide what info to collect
- Collect research
- Combine research into stories
=== Big goal: In the next meeting, personas are DONE, ready to go!!
How these will be used: -Community team can use this info to make brochures for specific personas! Will help us to better communicate with & reach people in certain contexts -This information will help us across all of our teams! -Used to flesh out stories used by communications teams -Thinking about personas before we give talks, presentations - make sure to keep diverse groups of people in mind!!
How many do we need? -Initially, 5 (or one per role; pick one element and provide a persona for different bits of this)