Public trust user research

This guide is for conversations with non-specialists before Browsec commits to a distributed-trust architecture. Its purpose is to discover what people would benefit from, tolerate, distrust, and reject—not to persuade them that our current idea is correct.

Ask one question at a time. Let the participant describe concrete experiences before introducing terminology such as certificate authority, consensus, community trust, reputation, or distributed network.

Short conversational interview

Existing experience

Have you ever opened a site and received a security or certificate warning? What did you think was happening?
What did you do next, and why?
Have you ever wanted to use a site that your browser blocked even though you believed it was legitimate?
Have you ever trusted a site because the browser showed no warning and later regretted it?

What “trustworthy” means

When you call an online service trustworthy, what do you mean?
Does trustworthiness change with the activity—for example reading news, sending a private message, downloading software, or making a payment?
What information would help you decide whether to continue to a questionable site?
Which matters more to you: knowing who operates the service, knowing that other people have used it safely, or knowing that its technical identity has not unexpectedly changed?

People and institutions

Whose judgment about an online service would you consider useful?
Would you treat advice differently if it came from friends, technical specialists, an organization you know, your employer, your government, or strangers with a good history?
Should several independent sources be able to disagree visibly, or should the browser combine them into one recommendation?
Would you ever allow a chosen person or group to make a security decision automatically for you? In what situations?
Whom would you explicitly refuse to give that power?

Desired behaviour

If the browser distrusts a service but people you chose consider it legitimate, what should the browser do?
If the browser accepts a service but a community you trust reports danger, what should happen?
Should the system merely provide evidence, recommend an action, block the connection, or let you choose among those behaviours?
How much explanation would you want before continuing: a simple warning, a short reason, or a detailed investigation?
Should an earlier decision apply once, for the current session, for a fixed time, or until you revoke it?

Would you be comfortable if other participants could learn which services your browser checks or visits?
Would you contribute observations about certificates or service behaviour if the system protected your browsing history? What protection would you expect?
Would public participation under a stable identity feel safer and more accountable, or more invasive?
What information about you should never leave your device?
Would background network activity, battery use, or bandwidth use bother you? How much control would you expect?

Abuse and failure

What would make you suspect that a trust community had been manipulated or captured?
What should happen when trusted participants disagree sharply?
How should the system respond if a once-reliable participant begins giving harmful advice?
Should old recommendations expire automatically? How quickly?
What would be worse: occasionally blocking a legitimate service, or occasionally allowing a harmful one?
What behaviour by this system would make you disable or uninstall it immediately?

Governance and control

Who should be able to create a trust community?
Who should decide its rules, membership, and removal process?
Should communities be able to split, merge, or recognize one another?
Should there always be a local setting that overrides every community and institution?
Which emergency security announcements, if any, should be allowed to reach everyone—and who should be permitted to issue them?

Closing

What useful capability have these questions failed to mention?
What part of this idea sounds most valuable?
What part sounds most dangerous or unpleasant?
Would you personally try such a system? Why or why not?

Very short version

Use these when there is time for only a brief conversation:

What makes an online service trustworthy to you?
Have browser security warnings ever helped or frustrated you?
Whose security advice would you accept, and whose would you reject?
Should advice remain visible as disagreement or become one browser verdict?
What could such a system do that would make you want it?
What could it do that would make you uninstall it immediately?
What information about your browsing must never leave your device?
When should the system advise, ask, block, or act automatically?

Interviewer notes

Ask for examples: “Can you remember a time when that happened?”
Do not correct technical misunderstandings during the discovery portion. Misunderstandings reveal what the interface will need to explain.
Avoid presenting “the community” as inherently benevolent or “the authority” as inherently malicious. Both can fail or be captured.
Distinguish what the participant wants, what they would merely tolerate, and what they would refuse.
Record the intended activity. Trust for reading a public page may differ from trust for payment, identity documents, private communication, or executable software.
Ask whether a desired automatic action should be the default or an explicit opt-in.
Record exact phrases when possible; they may suggest better UI language than our engineering vocabulary.
Do not collect names, browsing histories, or sensitive incidents unless the participant knowingly chooses to share them.

Synthesis questions for us

After several interviews, classify responses without forcing consensus:

Which benefits recur across technically different participants?
Which feared behaviours would be unacceptable even if technically useful?
Which decisions do people want to retain personally?
Which decisions are they willing to delegate, and to whom?
Which activities require different trust standards?
Where do people prefer visible disagreement over one combined score?
What privacy cost are people unwilling to pay?
Which terms were consistently misunderstood?
Which requested benefits require distributed trust, and which could be solved more safely by a local tool?
What is the smallest system that produces a real user benefit?

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