13:58:16 <dunqan> #startmeeting ux monthly sync
13:58:16 <MeetBot> Meeting started Tue Apr  6 13:58:16 2021 UTC.  The chair is dunqan. Information about MeetBot at http://wiki.debian.org/MeetBot.
13:58:16 <MeetBot> Useful Commands: #action #agreed #help #info #idea #link #topic.
13:58:59 <dunqan> good morning/afternoon/evening team! let's give everyone a few minutes to join and get settled
13:59:19 <thurayya> o/
13:59:25 <antonela> hello folks!
13:59:27 <likeanushkaa> hello everyone!
13:59:33 <ephemeralwaves> hello!
13:59:57 <dunqan> Pad is here: https://pad.riseup.net/p/1D8sK8Zy74b_0qclC97I-ux-team-monthly-2020-keep
14:00:09 <dunqan> please feel free to add any discussion items at the end of the agenda
14:00:26 <dunqan> hey everyone!
14:01:31 <dunqan> Okay let's get started
14:01:32 <josernitos> Hello :)
14:01:43 <dunqan> hey josernitos!
14:01:58 <dunqan> Firstly, welcome back antonela!!!
14:02:08 <antonela> :D
14:02:37 <antonela> happy to return! thanks dunqan for all the hard work during these months!
14:02:51 <dunqan> no problem, glad to have you back!
14:03:13 * antonela developing plans to keep dunqan close!
14:03:53 * dunqan is checking at the pad
14:04:04 <anarcat> welcome back antonela ! :)
14:04:38 <antonela> nice to see you here anarcat
14:05:05 <dunqan> So there was one announcement in particular I wanted to highlight, and that's that the onion guide fanzine is now available in ES and PT
14:05:21 <anarcat> i'm just a fan of ux, no actual clue on how to do it :p
14:05:28 <dunqan> thanks very much gaba and gus for all their hard work on the translations!
14:05:34 <thurayya> wooow!
14:05:41 <dunqan> You can read more about the guides on this blog post: https://blog.torproject.org/onionize-your-workflow
14:06:43 <dunqan> also, related, onion service operators can now get DV certificates from Greek nonprofit Harica!: https://blog.torproject.org/tls-certificate-for-onion-site
14:08:18 <dunqan> Last announcement – Tor Browser 10.0.15 was released last week – which brings us on to our first agenda item
14:09:05 <dunqan> We've decided to take down the recruitment banner for the User Surveys in the 10.0.15 release, and I've subsequently closed the surveys themselves too
14:09:41 <dunqan> thurayya I know you spotted that the banners were still up on Tor Browser for Android – apparently approval has been delayed, but it should be rolling out this week now :)
14:09:47 <thurayya> dunqan: do you have any news about the survey on TBA?
14:09:48 <thurayya> ahh ok
14:10:10 <thurayya> still getting hundreds of emails (daily) from people because of that
14:10:18 <dunqan> In the interim users will be getting the "survey expired" message, which isn't ideal, but should only be temporary
14:10:31 <dunqan> thurayya: ah nooo, I haven't had too many
14:10:31 <thurayya> thanks :)
14:10:36 <dunqan> sorry about that!
14:10:59 <thurayya> np
14:11:46 <thurayya> about the survey responses -- we thought about working this month on analyzing all of them
14:11:59 <thurayya> we got 72K responses, last time i saw
14:12:00 <dunqan> We haven't triaged the submissions yet but our final submission counts are 1797 completions for the snowflake survey, and 72933 completions for the Tor Browser user survey (!!!!)
14:12:09 <dunqan> aha yes!
14:12:24 <ggus> omg!
14:12:28 <dunqan> how are you getting on thurayya? have you managed to get metabase connected?
14:13:23 <thurayya> not yet! i exported the responses and i'm going to try this today
14:13:59 <antonela> !!!
14:14:02 <dunqan> awesome, I need to follow gaba's steps to see if I can produce a faster/leaner db this time around
14:14:08 <dunqan> my last db was... clunky
14:14:15 <thurayya> we'll probably need another meeting to discuss which tags to use to analyze all of them
14:14:16 <dunqan> I actually ended up killing my instance of metabase entirely
14:15:05 <dunqan> thurayya: yep absolutely, let's take a week to experiment and then bring our initial findings back – does that sound good?
14:15:09 <dunqan> or would you like two weeks?
14:15:12 <thurayya> perfect :)
14:15:25 <dunqan> just initial ideas, nothing solid
14:15:29 <thurayya> i think one week sounds reasonable
14:16:04 <dunqan> great! let's figure out a time to chat next week – I'll ping folks offline :)
14:16:28 <antonela> im up to meet next week to discuss about the analysis
14:17:16 <dunqan> perfect! let's see if we can find a time when everyone's free :D
14:17:29 <antonela> yep
14:18:04 <dunqan> any other comments/Qs about the surveys for today, or shall I give josernitos the floor for the next agenda item?
14:19:00 <thurayya> i'm good ;)
14:20:21 <dunqan> great! josernitos recently shared their tor browser onboarding study with the UX mailing list
14:20:39 <dunqan> and you can find the initial report here: https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/ux/research/-/blob/master/reports/2021/UR-Tor-CostaRica.md
14:21:10 <dunqan> josernitos are you there? would you like to give a little introduction to your work and then we can open the floor for discussion?
14:22:20 <josernitos> I feel on the spot. Hi everyone. I ran a study that made me question how are we thinking and talking about the features that we ship. The study was an exploratory more than usability study. I wanted to know what sorts of things people had in their mind while they were trying to do the basics things they should be able to do: search Tor, download it, install it, configure it, run it, use it.
14:23:30 <josernitos> And I found people were confused. And confused is an interesting word because they were able to do most of the things I said before. But... They did it with questions.
14:24:08 <josernitos> Is it the first result on google? Is this the Tor Browser download page? Etc.
14:24:17 <dunqan> yup, it poses an interesting point as to what we consider our criteria for success in accomplishing these tasks
14:25:05 <dunqan> e.g. is some confusion ultimately acceptable if the participant is still browsing successfully and safely? and how will that confusion be alleviated through continued usage of the browser?
14:25:58 <josernitos> I think success is always that they were able to do it. But, above usability, we should also have people feel comfortable with the decisions they are taking. As when you use a shopping site. And they tell you the price. And you can review the items before paying, etc.
14:27:01 <josernitos> But then, I remembered this article I sent on the newsletter. That talked about influence and I figured we could benefit from it.
14:27:53 <josernitos> So that we could plan, design, research with those frameworks in mind. Since they allow us to talk about what is the impact we have. And if we are doing what we intend.
14:28:03 <dunqan> yes, absolutely, there are still usability heuristics that can be improved even in successful scenarios
14:29:42 <dunqan> antonela, was there anything you wanted to ask?
14:29:58 <josernitos> So. I did a study. I reported findings. And sent the idea of using shared language because it seems to me that we can  design/research/plan with a framework that can help us in the decision making process.
14:31:32 <dunqan> I'm slightly cautious about adopting a single usability framework, as we tend to utilize several (often overlapping) frameworks depending on the problem itself
14:31:49 <dunqan> they can certainly be useful in evaluating and discussing UX issues though
14:32:03 <josernitos> Is it a crazy idea? There was no feedback on the newsletter. And is something I'd like to know from this meeting. Jaja basicly.
14:33:07 <josernitos> I don't think that everything has to use it. I just think is helpful to use it when context demands it.
14:33:22 <dunqan> absolutely, when the context fits
14:33:25 <josernitos> But as I said. I have no clue.
14:33:54 <dunqan> antonela and I have also applied nielsen's usability heuristics and the tenets of human data interaction to specific problems in the past too
14:34:32 <antonela> josernitos: great work! ive been reading your reporting and also the issues you opened, thank you for that!
14:34:32 <josernitos> I understand. This is no usability framework, though. Is just words to help us work.
14:34:44 <dunqan> the language pop-up is pretty interesting as a HDI issue as it directly relates to users negotiating access to their data in a way
14:34:50 <antonela> josernitos: i have some comments less on the research more on the issues
14:35:18 <antonela> i think the research is relevant to inform future iterations in TB onboarding for example
14:36:13 <antonela> about a "framework for decision process" on which feature release and why
14:36:30 <antonela> that is not something we decide here in the ux team isolated from the rest of the project
14:37:48 <antonela> in fact, all the improvements we have been shipping in tb since tb 7.5 were discussed with developers since the beginning
14:38:30 <antonela> but, we can iterate and improve our flow for community research and reporting
14:39:41 <antonela> deciding on what we release or not does not depend on _one_ research, is a holistic decision based on a lot of things including sponsors, historical user needs, who is the user whom this improvement benefits, etc
14:40:03 <antonela> makes sense?
14:41:19 <josernitos> Thanks for sharing this. Yes its a team effort (engineer+ux+community+etc) and my question then is: how IS this decision making process? How can you bring everyone on board onto why yes or no: X feature. As they all have a different point of view.
14:42:28 <antonela> well, that is a way of open leadership we try to practice here which annoys people who really need a vertical structure for making decisions :)
14:42:40 <josernitos> I wanted to share a language that we could use. On influence. But. Maybe this is not the meeting to talk about that. And my proposal is kind of wacky. Jaja
14:42:48 <antonela> haha
14:43:21 <josernitos> Got it. I'm new. I just have to stick for awhile and see how the decision process takes place.
14:43:58 <antonela> speaking about features strictly, we have open discussions in gitlab!
14:44:17 <josernitos> (Although, I want to clarify that I'm not suggesting a vertical structure.)
14:44:38 <antonela> more meta topics like vision or future product iterations does happen with different kind of stakeholders (not at the ux meeting)
14:44:55 <josernitos> Got it.
14:45:16 <dunqan> No problem josernitos! This is actually the perfect segue to our third agenda item too...
14:45:24 <thurayya> should we add "decision making process" to our faq - open research section?
14:45:31 <josernitos> I'd love to learn more about that. Which meeting does it take place.
14:45:42 <dunqan> thurayya: yes, this is an excellent idea!
14:46:03 <dunqan> So I added "3. Discussion on how to report issues arising from UX research" to the agenda
14:46:35 <antonela> yes! thanks dunqan for it
14:46:51 <antonela> something that is really useful after someone runs a research is having some take aways from that research
14:47:21 <antonela> and i think issues are a really good way to do it
14:47:22 <antonela> but
14:48:10 <antonela> we cannot move these issues to the development repo directly. I think that'd be useful and fun to have internal discussions about them before moving them to development, if they are ready to it
14:49:21 <dunqan> Yep! I think the haphazard flow established works well – in that the researcher reports in /ux/research/, someone triages the initial report, and then an actionable issue is then created in the correct repo (if applicable)
14:49:50 <antonela> for example, this ticket is great  and we come up with a good improvement request but now it has deep technical errors https://gitlab.torproject.org/tpo/ux/research/-/issues/34
14:51:30 <dunqan> antonela, do you think we should try and keep discussion around a single piece of research within one ticket?
14:51:35 <josernitos> Can we invite engineers to our ticket discussions to help us understand better?
14:51:41 <dunqan> or split it out per topic as josernitos has done?
14:51:54 <antonela> about:tor is not a webpage, so we cannot fake a circuit, the circuit display changes in every tab so we can offer isolation by default, etc
14:52:14 <antonela> josernitos: no, we dont have capacity to have tb devs reviewing this suggestions at the moment
14:52:35 <antonela> josernitos: they will review these tickets if we move them to the development repo, after an internal review
14:52:48 <josernitos> Understood
14:52:56 <antonela> dunqan: not sure, probably a ticket per topic is good
14:54:18 <dunqan> awesome, okay!
14:54:29 <josernitos> I forgot about tab circuit. Hehe you are right. Tor has so many things. I was trying to just point towards how might we solve the issue. But the idea was to prompt these sort of discussions. ;)
14:54:49 <antonela> so, something we can do for the next month is reviewing the tickets and discuss in gitlab what can make it to the development repo and what not
14:55:13 <antonela> im suggesting this because if we move these tickets directly without internal discussion, dev will probably close them and we will never see them again
14:56:10 <josernitos> I like the process: research > findings (report)> issues > discussion > move to dev.
14:56:10 <josernitos> Did I understood it correctly?
14:56:43 <antonela> the circuit display ticket, for example, can iterate in a good suggestion for the next onboarding iteration. We can spend an slide to explain circuits more deeply than what we are doing now.
14:56:46 <antonela> josernitos: ye
14:57:31 <antonela> we are about the hour, but will ping you priv josernitos to learn about the grant and when it ends
14:57:36 <antonela> great job btw!
14:57:53 <josernitos> Thanks Antonela. Welcome back :)
14:58:31 <antonela> (:
14:58:31 <dunqan> yes thanks for all your work so far josernitos!
14:59:03 <dunqan> and thanks to everyone for making it today, have a good week and I'm looking forward to seeing you all next month :)
14:59:06 <dunqan> #endmeeting