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E2E: Key Backup: Recovery UI confusing (key vs. passphrase) #9437

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jryans opened this issue Apr 12, 2019 · 2 comments
Open

E2E: Key Backup: Recovery UI confusing (key vs. passphrase) #9437

jryans opened this issue Apr 12, 2019 · 2 comments
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A-E2EE A-E2EE-Key-Backup O-Frequent Affects or can be seen by most users regularly or impacts most users' first experience S-Minor Impairs non-critical functionality or suitable workarounds exist T-Defect X-Needs-Community-Testing X-Needs-Design Z-Confidence-Low Low confidence in the enhancement or suggestion based on known factors, or as described.

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@jryans
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jryans commented Apr 12, 2019

When attempting to use key recovery from a new device, I saw the following screens:

2019-04-12 at 10 30

The status above really doesn't make it clear that I actually have keys backed up and I can still access them. (Extracted status message to #9446.) "Use key backup" feels like it's telling me I haven't set it up at all. "Restore from key backup" would be a better string to use there. (Extracted button text to #9438.)

Looking at the Advanced section:

2019-04-12 at 10 32

The Advanced section is the only bit that suggests I actually do have a working backup. The "basic" / non-advanced view should always suggest a backup exists if there is one.

When I click "Use key backup", I see:

image

To be honest, even after working on Riot every day, I find it hard to remember which one is the "key" and which is the "passphrase". I tried my recovery key here, but that failed, so eventually I clicked the link to change to that dialog:

image

This did succeed, but the path to reach it as I've described here was quite confusing.

@jryans
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jryans commented Dec 5, 2019

This still needs some big picture thinking on how to reduce confusion, but I think a small tweak that would simplify the current model in my mind at least is if we only use "recovery" for one of the two:

  • "recovery passphrase" becomes "key backup passphrase" or similar
  • "recovery key" remains as-is

@jryans jryans removed the Z-UI/UX label Mar 9, 2021
@bwindels bwindels added X-Needs-Design O-Frequent Affects or can be seen by most users regularly or impacts most users' first experience S-Minor Impairs non-critical functionality or suitable workarounds exist and removed P1 S-Major Severely degrades major functionality or product features, with no satisfactory workaround labels Apr 27, 2022
@nadonomy
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Agree all of this needs work, but just labelling confidence in low in the right solution as:

  1. We'll want to change this kind of nomenclature holistically
  2. We'll want to test any changes with users
  3. It'll happen as part of a concerted cross-platform effort by the crypto & auth teams

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Labels
A-E2EE A-E2EE-Key-Backup O-Frequent Affects or can be seen by most users regularly or impacts most users' first experience S-Minor Impairs non-critical functionality or suitable workarounds exist T-Defect X-Needs-Community-Testing X-Needs-Design Z-Confidence-Low Low confidence in the enhancement or suggestion based on known factors, or as described.
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