In this interface analysis, the cognitive walkthrough (CW) is conducted. In the CW approach, the evaluator performs designated tasks and assesses the usability of the application based on a set of usability guidelines. Following the CW approach, I firstly generated tasks based on persona and selected a set of usability guidelines for analysis.

 

Persona

The persona used in the analysis is a novice online user, who has no knowledge about Tor Browser but is interested in using Tor Browser to protect herself from online tracking. Here is the persona:

Alice, a 33 year-old female, is a UX designer working in a company. For the most of time, she uses the MacBook given by the company for work. During the weekend, she usually uses her own MacBook for personal use. However, one time she found that she brought the wrong laptop, which was given by company. She did not want to go home to change it, but meanwhile, she did not want to use company’s laptop to plan her vacation. She remembered that a friend recommended her Tor Browser that will delete the online browsing history automatically. Therefore, she wanted to download Tor Browser and used it to search for flight ticket on Expedia. 

 

Tasks

Based on the persona, three main tasks were designated for analysis, including:

1. Install (and configure) the browser

2. Use browser to search for information

 

Usability Guidelines

According to prior studies [Clark et al., 2007], 8 usability guidelines are selected to evaluate the browser. The guidelines include that users should:

1. be aware of the steps needed to complete a task.

2. be able to determine how to perform these steps.

3. know when they have successfully completed a task.

4. be able to recognize, diagnose, and recover from noncritical errors.

5. not make unrecoverable dangerous errors.

6. be comfortable with the terminology used.

7. be sufficiently comfortable with the UI to keep using it.

8. be aware of the application’s status at all times.​

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Results

Installation of Tor Browser

To install Tor Browser, users need to go to Tor’s website to download the package designated for Mac. Like other applications, users open the package and draw the package to ‘Applications’ file for installation. Once the installation starts, a dialogue (Figure 1) pops out to ask users to select their setting preferences for Tor network.

 

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Figure 1. The interface for Tor network settings in the process of installation. 

The wordings of options can be confused for a novice user with little knowledge about Internet network

 

As shown in Figure 1, uses are asked about the status of their computer’s internet. The first choice describes a direct connection to the Tor network, which will work for most of users. However, the way it described on the interface is not direct to users. Instead of saying the option is recommended, it says “This will work in most situations”, which requires more efforts for users to understand.

 

For the second choice, users may not know whether their Internet is censored or proxied. Furthermore, the terms “configure”, “bridge”, “local proxy” can be difficult to understand for a novice user with very little knowledge about how Internet network works (Figure 1).

 

At this stage, users face a difficulty to decide which option works best for them if they have no knowledge about their Internet connection. Then a novice user may make two possible decisions: quit or select the first one since it states to work in most situations. However, if the user’s network is censored or proxied and user selects the first choice, she may not be able to install the Tor.

 

This dialogue of Tor network settings and the terminology it uses may not provide users clear information. This interface design violates the 2nd guideline that users are not be able to determine what to do for the next stop and the 7th one that users are not comfortable with the terminology. When it comes to the technical terms, most users may feel ‘stupid’ in front of the computer. Hence, there can be high drop-out rate at this stage.

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Use of Tor Browser

Landing on the Homepage

After the installation, users open the Tor Browser just like open any other browsers. Figure 2 shows the homepage of Tor Browser. From users’ point of view, this is a busy homepage when compared to other mainstream browsers (e.g., Google Chrome, Apple Safari, Mozilla Firefox). On the top of homepage there is a line introducing the “green onion” termed as “security slider” which allows users to change their security settings. A user may be curious enough to clink the button “open security settings” [1 in Figure 2] to see if they can change the security settings.

 

 

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Figure 2. Homepage of Tor Users

 

Security Settings

Once users open the security settings, a dialogue pops out and shows a slider bar with different levels of security level (Figure 3). The default of slider bar is ‘Low’, which describes it provides the most usable experience for users.  Users can also choose the higher level of security by moving the slider bar to Medium or High. For both Medium and High security, the descriptions about how does the setting may affect users’ browsing experience, such as the latency of downloading the page. However, users may not understand the technical terms used in the descriptions, like “Javascript”, “Html 5”, and “NoScript”. Therefore, to avoid to “screw” the setting, most users will stay at the default setting, which is low level of security. This also violates the 6th guideline that users may feel uncomfortable about the terms and too afraid to change the setting.

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Figure 3. Dialogue for Tor Browser Security Settings

 

Test Tor Network Settings

Another feature catches users’ eyes is “Test Tor Network Settings”. Users may want to confirm if they are at the most secure mode before the search. When users click the line, they will be directed to another page that shows the confirmation message (Figure 4). Now users can know where their IP addresses are. After confirming the setting, the next step for users to do is to start searching the information. However, there is no direct search bar on this page. Users need to either type into the small search bar on the top of browser or go back to the prior page, which users may spend more time to figure out how to search.

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Figure 4. The page shows after users click ‘Test Tor Network Settings’

 

 

Searching for Flight Ticket

Now the user goes back to the homepage and starts searching for the flight ticket. In this scenario, user wants to search the flight ticket on Expedia and she typed the keyword in the search bar. The user finds that it takes a while to landing on the search engine page, which surprisingly is Duckduckgo, another private search engine. Although the user may find it a bit odd since she usually uses Google, she can still find Expedia on the top (Figure 5).

 

 

 

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Figure 5. Search page on Duckduckgo

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Then she clicks on it and expects the Expedia will show up in a minute. However, somehow the page shows “Access Denied” (Figure 6). At this point, users can be confused and wonder why they cannot access the page. This is because the page requests sent via Tor network may be considered as the suspicious attack, thereby the website block the request. 

 

Since there is no instruction or explanations for users about what to do, users may have three actions: go back and search again, search for another site (e.g., Google Flight), or quit. If uses go back and try to search again but it still fails, they may decide that this browser or search engine does not work and switch to another search engine or go back to their primary used browsers.

 

Therefore, when users do not know how to recover from or fix this error, users will decide that this browser is not usable to them, especially when the browser cannot bring them what they want.

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Figure 6. Access Denied after attempt to search for Expedia

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Discussion

According to the results, there are three main usability problems of Tor Browser.

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Technical Terms: ‘Make Me Feel Stupid’

I found that there are many technical terms used on the interface of Tor Browser, including the installation and the usage. Novice users may find these terms difficult to understand. These technical terms may result in users’ misuse or disuse of features. For instance, when installing the browser, users may select the false configuring settings for Tor network due to the lack of understanding of the terms. Also, the lack of understanding of the terms can also make a user follow the default setting, which may not be the best option for the user. When facing the difficult terms, on the one hand, users may think this tool is not useful; on the other hand, users may feel that they are ‘not smart’ enough to use it. These feelings can further hinder users’ use or adoption of Tor browser. Therefore, how to make the terms and options on Tor Browser more understandable and clear to users is important.

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Latency of Page Loading: 'Make Me Wait'

Another issue is the latency of page loading. Since users have been used to receive the search results within very short period of time (like 0.01-1 seconds), users may think that the search via Tor Browser is too slow. Also, the higher level of security users set on Tor, the slower the page loading can be. The latency of Tor Browser is due to the network structure of Tor, which is a tradeoff between the security and usability. A way to solve this issue is to design a message to notify users about the latency of page loading.

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Error Message without Support: ‘Make Me Fail’

Due to the nature of Tor network, some websites may treat the page request from Tor as malicious and deny its access. Thus, users may receive the error message while attempting to access certain sites. Yet, Tor Browser does not provide any instruction or explanation about the errors message, which leaves users on their own way to solve this issue. Users can get frustrated about their failed requests, especially when they have no supports or instructions about how to recover from the err.

 

As mentioned earlier, users can take several actions, such as retrying the site, changing to another site, or quitting the browser. However, no matter which action users take, they have already had a bad impression about Tor Browser or consider it as not a usable tool. That is, the consequence of an unsupportive error message will not only result in the low satisfaction about the browser but also its disuse.

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Competitive Analysis

I selected other two similar browsing tools for competitive analysis: one is Incognito mode on Chrome and EPIC browser.

 

Incognito Mode in Chrome

Incognito mode in Chrome (Figure 7) is a convenient way to disable online tracking (like cookies) and have clear browsing history. When compared to Tor Browser, Chrome’s incognito mode is much easier to understand, faster for searching, and provides access to almost all of websites. In terms of usability, incognito mode is definitely more usable to users, especially for those who are Chrome’s users. However, unlike Tor Browser, incognito mode does not provide any network security. Users can still be tracked in incognito mode. Thus, for Chrome’s incognito mode, it provides high usability but low security.

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Figure 7. Incognito mode in Chrome

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Epic Private Browser

Epic browser (Figure 8), similar to Tor Browser, allows users to hide their IP address by enabling proxy. Also, users’ access request of certain sites can be denied due to the proxy. Yet, Epic Browser provides no supportive instructions to users. When it comes to terminology, Epic focuses on privacy, instead of anonymity, and its terms are easier to understand than Tor Browser. However, the emphasis on tracking and privacy may makes users uncomfortable to use.

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Figure 8. Epic Browser Homepage

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Conclusion

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1. Change the wording of the options on the dialogue of installation. For instance, make the first option an explicit recommendation for users.

2. Change the wording for Tor security browser setting. The goal of the security browser setting is to inform users the expected outcome while selecting the higher level of security. For instance, the higher level of security may decrease the lower browsing quality.

3. Design a message to notify users about the latency. When users receive the message (feedback), they know what’s going on. Then their dissatisfaction can be decreased, which may further increase their usage.

4. Design a message to explain the error message and guide users to retry another site.

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References

Clark, J., Van Oorschot, P. C., & Adams, C. (2007, July). Usability of anonymous web browsing: an examination of tor interfaces and deployability. In Proceedings of the 3rd symposium on Usable privacy and security (pp. 41-51). ACM.

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