[Freedombox-discuss] Initial User Experience

[Jonas Smedegaard]

On 11-05-09 at 08:50am, Joshua Spodek wrote:
> On Mon, 2011-05-09 at 12:21 +0000, 
> freedombox-discuss-request at lists.alioth.debian.org wrote:
> > we can start show a little "risk meter", still far down in the "safe 
> > zone".  Jim can perhaps (depending on the UI) click on this risk 
> > meter to get to those questions on preferred risk level, but if not 
> > it is simply informed to him what his actions cause on the risk 
> > meter.
> 
> To give the risk meter meaning, we could "calibrate" it by showing 
> other relevant risk levels on the meter. For example, if Jim uses it 
> to blog, the risk meter could show risks relative to using various 
> cloud blog services or hosting on his own rented server. If he uses it 
> for Diaspora the risk meter could show risks relative to using 
> Facebook for various activities.

Interesting idea.

I would prefer comparative risk measures done as project independently 
from FreedomBox, however - not put it inside FreedomBox.  Because either 
you compare apples with oranges (specific use of FreedomBox compared to 
vague guesswork or general usage pattern statistics for e.g. Facebook) 
or you _lower_ the risk when calculating it: The very act of logging 
into Facebook to gather information needed to measure risk levels of 
specific usage patterns exposes FreedomBox to Facebook!

My idea is to use the meters only as a learning aid, not any comparative 
measurements.  Not even measurements between two FreedomBoxes!

Like "hmm, I see this "Tor" thingie that my geek friend babbled about is 
here too. Activating it doesn't affect my karma or risk levels much, 
though - unless also enabling that odd "exit node" thingie which makes 
both spike, but also pops up a warning message I cannot be bothered 
reading just now...  Ahh, I notice that simply going through my 
auto-generated contact list and explicitly marking my level of trust in 
each of them decreases risk - I'll do some more of that, then."


That last housekeeping activity is a user-friendly presentation of what 
we geeks call Web of Trust.  And no, I do not claim to be an expert on 
that, so all you clever folks out there please instead of shooting me 
down help _improve_ user experience of such activity, ok?


Regards,

 - Jonas

-- 
 * Jonas Smedegaard - idealist & Internet-arkitekt
 * Tlf.: +45 40843136  Website: http://dr.jones.dk/

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