Usability is a fundamental concern for all software that involves a human user. When it comes to security and privacy tools, usability problems can have disastrous consequences, such as accidentally sharing data. Likewise, poor usability can hinder the broad adoption of technically well-developed tools. This thesis project focuses on how usability aspects and human factors are addressed in the development of security- and privacy-related open source software. You will study whether and how open source software communities on GitHub identify, discuss, and address usability issues on their dedicated issue-tracking systems. The project will focus on one specific family of security/privacy-related software tools (e.g., email encryption tools or anonymity tools). In addition to analyzing and categorizing the usability-related online discussions, you will conduct your own usability inspection of the tools, e.g., using a heuristic evaluation and a cognitive walkthrough. Subsequently, you will compare and contrast the (types of) issues discussed by the community with those identified with well-established usability inspection methods. Ideally, you can determine to what degree current practices lead to usable software and propose recommendations regarding how to (better) account for human factors in the software development process. Several students can carry out this project simultaneously if every student focuses on a specific family of security or privacy-related products.
Note that this proposal can be done by five students (as long as everyone focuses on a different type of software tool).
If you are interested in this topic, please send an email to Hanna Schraffenberger via hanna.schraffenberger@ru.nl .