Our users are regular people, keenly interested in privacy but not necessarily knowledgeable about the technical details of cryptography. They want to discuss potentially sensitive or incriminating topics without being tracked.
They could be political activists in an environment where the government doesn't support their viewpoints. They could be children wanting to discuss something without their parents seeing it. They could be researchers looking for a way to collect secure, anonymous data from others. Or they could be employees of an enterprise working on a sensitive project and don't want technical details to be divulged to outside sources.
Message Sender
Message Receiver
Task |
Goal |
Frequency |
Effort |
Pitfalls |
Others Involved |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Manage Contacts |
To ensure the identity (or psudo-identity) of |
sometimes |
medium |
Indicates that the user |
The contact |
Communicate |
To discuss a topic securely while remaining |
often |
medium |
Expose information |
Other people in |
Dissociate with a user |
To break contact or association with a contact |
rarely |
fast |
unsafe (can't undo) |
|
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 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.
Key Insights
The subject stated that he would use such a system for private conversations with his girlfriend. At first didn't feel that he would ever need true anonymity but felt that a simple encrypted messaging system could be useful. After further thought, the subject noted that anonymity would be useful when discussing sensitive subjects about which he held a strong, potentially politically incorrect, opinion.
In order to go through the hassle of installing the application, the subject indicated that he would need a significant reason. The application would have to inspire trust.
The subject said that he would find secure communication especially useful for discussing private matters. He says he often leaves out details that he would not want leaked when conversing via text message on a sensitive or embarrassing topic. Also it would be good for conversations that may have consequences if read by a third party. The subject said they would not know what to do if they wanted to communicate securely at the moment. They will usually call if they need to discuss sensitive information, as it leaves less of an explicit trail.
He said he would use secure communication if it was free and simple to use. Also, he also said that it would be worth paying for if used in a business-like setting where sensitive information is being exchanged. He noted it would be more careless/less hesitant to be straight forward via messages with security assurances.
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.
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.