Usably Encrypted Email

Software	Object-oriented language with good GUI
Covers	Interface design, HCI, computer security
Skills Required	Programming, understanding of computer security, understanding of usability evaluation
Challenge	Conceptual ??? Technical ??? Programming ??

Brief Description

How can people use secure encrypted email, without this being a pain in the neck, and without this getting in the way of communicating with people who aren't set up to exchange encrypted emails? The technology is there, but people don't use it... Why not?

The challenge for this project is to design and implement a user interface for a mailer that supports public key encryption, and subject it to systematic user testing to see how usable it is.

The project will need to include a careful assessment of what technological infrastructure will need to be in place and what communication protocols will be needed to get the mailer to work, and also an assessment of how feasible this would be and how secure it would be. How much is already there? What else if anything would be needed?

The project would be made stronger by doing proper user testing of more than one version of the interface, possibily including a first test of a paper prototype before any serious implementing happens.

The interface design itself, the usability evaluation, and the technological feasibility assessment are all essential parts of the project.

Extension

Building a working mailer would be a big task, but...

Reference

The old but very influential paper that inspired this project idea:
Alma Whitten & J.D. Tygar, Why Johnny can't encrypt: A usability evaluation of PGP 5.0 Proceedings of the 8th USENIX Security Symposium (Washington, D.C., Aug. 23–36, 1999), 169–184.

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