Below is some of the judges' feedback on the entries submitted to the design phase of the GUI competition. Those interested in submitting an entry for the implementation phase of the competition may find the feedback useful in guiding their implementations.
Tor users who would like to have a usable, well-implemented GUI for Tor should also add their feedback on some or all of the design entries below. Also, if you have an idea for a feature that wasn't mentioned in any of the design documents but would really like to see implemented, feel free to add it to this page.
Useful guidance is provided during the installation procedure;
the persona bar is easy to understand (the apparent geographic
origin is a very nice and intuitive indicator); the configuration
panes generally include good explanations of the various settings.
It is easy to see how to switch between masked and unmasked modes
in Firefox. There is no particular clue to how to get to the
right-click privacy menu from the persona bar, however.
'''Consistency:''' 9/10
Almost everything in this design uses standard or well-known
controls in familiar and expected ways. The persona bar is a
bit unusual, but it has precedents in the status bar and the
Firefox information bar.
'''Workflow:''' 8/10
I agree with the submitters' position that anonymous web browsing
will be the most commonly used application. Given that assumption,
the idea of incorporating a Tor interface into Firefox makes a lot
of sense. The additional privacy configuration pane and the
persona bar are well integrated with the workflow of the browser.
The cookie information bar is suboptimal in my opinion, but it is
still far better than the cookie prompts in other popular browsers.
(I consider it suboptimal because the true risk decision point is
the *sending* of cookies, not the receiving of cookies.)
I am concerned that there may be some user confusion about the
interaction between the FoxTor settings and the Tor (system tray)
settings. It appears that the user could choose any combination
of: (a) Privacy: masked or unmasked; (b) Privacy level: High,
medium, low, or custom; (c) Privacy needs: Critical, selective,
or basic. When privacy is "unmasked" but privacy needs are
"critical", do the captions make sense?
'''Visual Design:''' 8/10
The appearance of the interface is fairly clean, appealing, and
understandable, with the exception of the traffic monitor window,
which i find potentially confusing. The traffic monitor window
has two similar-looking grey boxes, each with an icon above and
an IP address below -- but the two boxes represent completely
different things. The two boxes appear to be connected by a
large green arrow, but the information shown is not consistent
with any interpretation of the arrow i can imagine (it is not a
translation, a data flow, or a network connection).
'''Correctness and Completeness:''' 7/10
The submitters have provided an extensive and fairly complete
description of the interface design and its motivations. The
design covers most aspects of using Tor, though it lacks access
to the Tor log (or equivalent support for troubleshooting).
The instructions in the traffic monitor window are very likely
incorrect. It's risky to rely on the user to detect text in
the raw network data -- the presence or absence of readable of
text is not a reliable indicator of privacy, and it is simply
not feasible to expect the user to be monitoring the raw data
constantly as it scrolls by.
'''Additional comments include:'''
* concern about the download time of a whole new Firefox package.
* confusion in figure 3.2: what does it mean to configure "all"
applications?
* Figure 3.3 : protect vs. mask?
* Figure 3.4: How do I start tor manually? add instructions to the dialog
* figure 3.12: add what to the exceptions list? This site?
Several judges expressed strong concerns about figure 3.19: Is this supposed to show sniffed traffic? What if the selected traffic is a long cookie or an image? We'd strongly like to see testing around this. There were also questions about the synchronization between the Mozilla GUI and the toolbar icon.
=== Public Feedback ===
== April 3rd's entry ==
http://www.april3rd.com/tor
=== Judges' Feedback ===
'''Discoverability:''' 9/10
The captions in each pane of the configuration dialog, contextual
help, and labels on most fields combine to make discoverability
very strong in this design.
'''Consistency:''' 8/10
The design combines idioms from a variety of sources (tabs,
pull-down menus, underlined hyperlinks). The overall effect is
pretty, though it looks a bit unusual in a Windows configuration
dialog. A note on the design points out that "Proprietary controls
make for a visually attractive user interface"; while some of the
subtle changes can make the interface prettier, I don't agree with
the claim in general. There are a few cases where I would prefer
a more standard-looking control, particularly for drop-down lists.
A significant inconsistency exists between the help captions shown
in the main window and in the configuration window. On a smaller
note, some hyperlinks are underlined while others are not.
'''Workflow:''' 7/10
For tasks where the user knows what he or she wants to do, finding
and achieving the task appears fairly straightforward. However,
the interface doesn't do much to suggest possible avenues for
solving a problem when something is wrong.
'''Visual Design:''' 9/10
The overall look of the design is very appealing. I appreciate
the attention paid to details such as the de-emphasis of
application version numbers and use of lighter line weights.
The graph period label is very well placed.
The little computer icons in the "onion layers" column are
superfluous and visually distracting. Colour-coded numbers
alone would be more readable and less busy.
'''Correctness and Completeness:''' 3/10
Big parts of the design are missing. Most of the help text is
not actually written, and there are no designs shown for the
other five tabs in the configuration window. The wizard for
setting up Tor for new applications -- perhaps one of the most
interesting and most used features of this design -- is left
The discoverability of the status icon is good. Clicking on
a status icon to get a configuration panel is a familiar idiom.
The discoverability of the configuration panels is not as good,
because the names of the panels aren't all clear. "TorGUI" is
a poor name, and would be better named "Appearance" or "Indicators".
Also, "Details" is a poor name, and would be more appropriately
named "Applications". These are easily fixable.
'''Consistency:''' 4/10
The menu bar on the dialog window is inconsistent with its
function. Most of the menus aren't even menus. A series of tabs
would make much more sense and would be more consistent with
common practice.
I would turn the "QuickInfo" pane into a "Status" tab, and move
the "Start" and "Stop" commands from the "TorGUI" menu to buttons
visible in the "Status" tab. The "Preferences" pane under "TorGUI"
would become a separate tab entitled "Indicators". "Routing" and
"Profiles" would be other tabs. The "Window" menu would become
unnecessary and go away.
'''Workflow:''' 7/10
I like the idea of a "Profiles" feature for saving and restoring
configurations. The rest of the workflow seems fairly reasonable,
neither unusually good or unusually bad. However, there is no
guidance for the user as to how to resolve a particular problem
when one occurs.
'''Visual Design:''' 7/10
I like the concept of a single icon to indicate the overall state
of Tor, with a click to open more detailed panels. This keeps the
interface simple and compact, while configuration settings are a
convenient click away.
I have concerns about the appearance of the icon. Shrunk down to
an icon size, the logo looks more like a bomb than an onion. It
may also be hard to read the concentric layers at a small size;
perhaps a flat horizontal fill (like a thermometer) would be more
visibly distinguishable.
The layout of some of the preference panes (especially "Routing"
and "Explicit Routing") could use some adjustment to improve
their clarity and usability.
'''Correctness and Completeness:''' 7/10
The interface provides access to most of the important features
of Tor, but not all of the configurable options. It also lacks
access to the Tor logfile. A rudimentary display of applications
using Tor is provided.
=== Author's Feedback on the Feedback ===
First of all I'd like to say, that the feed back was really valuable. It helped me a lot and will improve my future GUIs, but I will not continue work on this one, as I'm just to busy right now.
Now to some of the critized parts:
Discoverability: Yes, I agree the wording could be much better. But "TorGUI" is the (not very original) name of the whole application and it is usual to offer functions like "Quit" under a menu item with the same name as the application.
Consistency: Hell yeah, you're right! Now that I read the feedback, I wonder how I could ever arrange that as a menu...
Workflow: I imagined there would be a "Help"... At least there is in my menu ;)
Discoverability is generally poor. There is no guidance as to
where to start, and no explanation of what all the configuration
parameters mean or how one should decide how to set them. For
a Tor expert this would be fine, but not for a new Tor user.
The hostname tab (or hostname entry field) at the top of the
dialog is unlabelled and unexplained.
'''Consistency:''' 7/10
The interface provides access to all its functions in a single
window, which is a virtue, and provides consistent access to
all the configuration options. However, it doesn't look or
feel much like a typical confifugration panel.
'''Workflow:''' 5/10
The simplest operation (start/stop) is easy to access, but
other settings are hard to get at. The pull-down menus are
not described. I attempted to compile and build a working
demo from the source code, but did not succeed.
'''Visual Design:''' 7/10
Like Habets's submission, this uses a single icon to indicate
status and a click on the icon reveals a configuration panel.
This design uses the same icons and raises the same concerns.
'''Correctness and Completeness:''' 7/10
This interface provides complete access to the Tor configuration,
since it allows editing of all the parameters in the configuration
file. However, it does not provide access to the Tor logfile,
and doesn't show anything about currently running applications.
=== Public Feedback ===
=== Author's note ===
I don't have Tor installed therefore I've no idea what Tor actually needs. I also don't intend to win the contest but just show what's possible with wyoGuide. Since I'm also rather reluctant to install Tor for phase 2 my submission probably won't be improved and usable. Since I don't care for winning but for a working solution, therefore anyone joining my project, telling me what's needed and tests my code, can have whatever is rewarded.
