Security/Contextual Identity Project

Who am I?

That's a good question, and not simple to answer. It largely depends on the context in which this question is asked.

"One could say, with little exaggeration, that the persona is that which in reality one is not, but which oneself as well as others think one is." – Carl Jung [1]

So maybe I want different web sites or apps or people to see me as a different identity. Some of this probably comes from the desire to keep ones' social circles separate. Perhaps more comes from the desire to keep professional and personal lives separate. Perhaps this is the feel of "privacy" people feel when interacting with groups or organizations [2].

This sounds simple enough: allow people to switch between profiles. We tried that [3]. It's too much work for people [4]. People use Private Browsing Mode for this [5]. That's clunky.

We need to understand what people really want before we can create software to serve them. It's not about how people can operate our software, but rather how the software can operate as people expect it to. A large problem with complex systems like the Web is that peoples' expectations of how their identity and data is treated do not match up to reality.

This project aims to define exactly what people expect and identify ways to help the browser close this gap between what they want and how the web works.

Plan

This project will take three phases and produce clearly thought out revisions to Firefox and perhaps the web platform and identity-related efforts at Mozilla.

Principal Investigator

Monica Chew

Additional Team Members

Sid Stamm

Phase I: Problem Definition

The Firefox Vision Statement says, "People seek to regain more control over their online lives and expect more nuanced and contextual relationships with other people, websites and applications -- to share what they want about themselves on their own terms."

Deliverables:

Relationship to Manifesto

This project is core to the values held by Mozilla, and here's why.

Hypothesis and Estimated Outcome

Problem statement, criteria for measuring results.

Research plan

What kind of investigation is necessary and what resources are needed.

Phase II: Research and Study

Deliverables:

Catalog of Related Work

other work in this area.

User Research Papers

What we learn from studying our users.

Design Requirements / Use Cases

things we need to make our products live up to users' expectations.

Phase III: Implementation

Deliverables: (list is a work in progress)

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