Site logo image Heiko Tietze posted: "What comes to your mind,
when you ask yourself why people use LibreOffice? A "stunning user
experience" is likely not in the top list. And unfortunately we share
this problem with a lot of user facing Free Software. And there is a
common reason: We val" LibreOffice Design Team
<https://design.blog.documentfoundation.org>
Community support needed: We want to use our users personal data
<https://design.blog.documentfoundation.org/2022/11/01/community-support-needed-we-want-to-use-our-users-personal-data/>
Heiko Tietze
Nov 1
What comes to your mind, when you ask yourself why people use
LibreOffice? A "stunning user experience" is likely not in the top
list. And unfortunately we share this problem with a lot of user
facing Free Software.
And there is a common reason: *We value the privacy of our
users.<https://design.blog.documentfoundation.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/11/pexels-erik-mclean-4751200.jpg>*
Empty walkway in green field
<https://design.blog.documentfoundation.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2022/11/pexels-erik-mclean-4751200-1.jpg>
Photo by Erik Mclean at Pexels
<https://www.pexels.com/photo/empty-walkway-in-green-field-4751200/>
While our proprietary competitors constantly (mis)use user data to
improve the UX of their products, we are maneuvering in thick fog.
And whenever we try to reach out to our users to decide about design
directions, we mainly get feedback from white, male nerds [1
<https://design.blog.documentfoundation.org/2021/10/18/results-from-the-survey-about-libreoffice-calc/>]. You hopefully see the problems this implies.
The only solution is: We need to be able to evaluate usage
information from everyone else too. While preserving the privacy of
our users of course.
We need to be totally clear here, as we are touching common ground of
Free Software Communities. Data protection and control over own data
is a major driver for a large fraction of our community [2
<https://design.blog.documentfoundation.org/2017/09/13/open-source-means-libreoffice-users/>]. And it is for us too. Only when it comes to avoiding data in the first place, we do have to state, that we need aggregated personal data to able to do our work. We do not think creating data is bad per se.
Is there a third way?
The current data economy is set up to send out personal data to the
algorithms. Unfortunately data can easily be copied, and once it
leaves your property, you lose all control over it. So, today, you
either surrender and give up on your personal data or have to avoid
producing data in the first place, which is hard work.
But how about a third way, where all personal data is stored locally
on users' devices and only the algorithms are sent to the data to
learn? Then we only have to assure that the algorithm is not harming
the privacy in anyway, that the results from those algorithms cannot
be de-anonymized anymore and we can use the aggregated data of our
users without compromising the integrity of a single user's privacy.
The good news: We believe that we have found a partner project,
polypoly.coop <http://polypoly.coop> that creates exactly the
infrastructure for this third way.
With this post we ask you, the community for your help and support
for collaboration. We need you as a critical partner to watch out all
we do aligns with our values. We, the UX team need the results of
this collaboration to understand and reflect the needs of our diverse
community. And we need your technical excellence to make sure we keep
the basic promise: Any single user's privacy is preserved.
You can find a lot of information about /polypoly/ on their website.
We still want to highlight a few aspects that make us think polypoly
is the right project to partner with:
* /polypoly/ is legally organized as a cooperative. Only individuals
can become members. Each member has one vote, no matter how many
shares are owned. This assures that /polypoly/ will always work for
and in the interest of the users and can never be bought by big
money.
* /polypoly/ is Free Software, following a dual licencing model that
allows the commercial world to use the infrastructure in proprietary
products. You can find the source code here:
https://github.com/polypoly-eu/polyPod
<https://github.com/polypoly-eu/polyPod>
* the dual licencing model is part of a business model and allows the
cooperative to generate income, which makes it likely that the
project is there to stay.
* /polypoly/ is actively interested in cooperating with us and is
willing to invest into this project
Benefits for LibreOffice
From time to time we run surveys about existing features or planned
enhancements but without direct contact we have to invite users via
social media. With the effect that questions typically are completed
by tech-affine people with some expertise.
As a consequence we base decisions like what kind of UI should be the
default [3
<https://bugs.documentfoundation.org/show_bug.cgi?id=135501>] on
anecdotal reports and input from individuals who are more vocal than
other. Another example: A question we will never be able to
understand right now, is what function comes most often before Undo,
from which we could learn where uncertainties exists.
How it works
The basic idea of /polypoly/ is pretty simple:
1. User data is stored in a mesh network of user owned devices, which
is called the /polyPod/. Each person stores their own data on their
own device only, and it is only accessible with their explicit
consent. So we want to log the personal data of our users in there,
e.g. interactions with LibreOffice or demographic data from e.g.
questionnaires. Very different kinds of data can be stored in the
/polyPod/ and all data stored is fully transparent and can be
modified by the user.
2. The users can define via so-called "features" who is allowed to work
with their data, so The Document Foundation needs to ask the users
for permission. Again, the user can fully control who is allowed to
work on which data.
3. Finally we can send out algorithms that learn from all the users
that allow us to. So if we are interested how often different
LibreOffice applications are being used related to the location of
the user, we have to create an algorithm that learns the answer from
user's data and hops from user to user until we have the aggregated
answer and the algorithm comes back to us.
The details are of course more complex and look well thought through.
You will find more information on the /polypoly/ website.
Next steps
In a first step we want to create a prove of concept that allows us
to store relatively uncritical personal data from LibreOffice in the
/polyPod/ and run evaluations upon this. The actual data set has not
been defined yet. Everything needs to be opt-in and must not
compromise the normal operation of LibreOffice.
We want to increase the amount of generated data and users
participating gradually until we are able to actually do UX work
based on representative user feedback.
But most important is the backing of our community. We know how
important privacy for our community is and we want you to help us and
/polypoly/ to do things right. We are convinced that this third way
of dealing with personal data is the only possibility for Free
Software to be successful also on the UX side. Because you cannot do
proper UX work without proper contact to the users.
We are asking you to back this collaboration. If you have questions,
please go ahead. Not only now, but always. Please, be a critical
partner and help us to do things right and succeed in the end.
/Written by Bjoern Balazs/
Comment
<https://design.blog.documentfoundation.org/2022/11/01/community-support-needed-we-want-to-use-our-users-personal-data/#respond>
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