Identity/Department Status/2013-08-02
Our first report was useful to lots of folks, so we're going to start sending to everyone. The goal is to keep you informed and to get you excited about the work we are doing supporting Firefox products across the board. Please don't hesitate to contact us if there is anything we can do to improve this status update.
- Identity Department Focus
The team is currently focused on three key objectives:
- Fixing Sync - We must fix stability and usability issues in the present sync service
- One way to log into firefox - A single email / password and experience for Mobile, Desktop, and Web products (like Marketplace)
- Persona Adoption - We must quantify and increase the number of websites using Persona in Q3
For more information related to all Identity projects, please visit the Identity wiki.
- Signin to the Web (Persona)
Project Overview:
- Persona is designed to eliminate website passwords and empower users to choose their own identity online.
- It's long term goal is to become a standardized and browser-native means of decentralized authentication on the Internet
Current Activities:
- All gmail.com and googlemail.com email addresses now have first class Persona support. This means over 700,000,000 people can now use Persona without checking their email, or picking a new password. Formal announcement in the works.
- We kicked off a project to better understand how users and developers perceive Persona. Look for updates regarding our findings in the next status newsletter.
- PiCL (Profile in the CLoud)
Project Overview:
- PiCL is a project whose short term goal is to fix firefox sync.
- The long term goal to give users easy access to their Firefox data from any device.
- PiCL is going to take the interesting data in your Firefox Profile and move it to the cloud - make it possible to access and manage this data from web apps, mobile apps, and all of our products
Current Activities: Technical design review took place on July 25th.
- Over 20 Engineering and Product stakeholders were in attendance
- the project is proceeding with cross-functional support
Results of the UX in-person usability study is scheduled for Tuesday, Aug 6th at 10 am, PDT in the Identity vidyo-room
- Note: If you can't attend the call and are interested in the study, we will be recording the session & will post the link on the PiCL UX wiki page
Interested in learning more about PiCL? Check out the following:
- Native B2G & FXOS
Current Activities: B2G: Sign-in on First-run
- We are building Firefox Account creation into the first-time experience on FirefoxOS. When users unbox their phones, they will provide an email and password. From this, we will create a Firefox Account for them that will give them an identity for use with marketplace and future cross-device services, like synchronization of bookmark, history, and password data.
Native
- We are working with Eric Rescorla's team to make it possible for participants in a WebRTC call to verify each other's identities using Persona. We expect to have a demo of this working in the next week.
Check out the native implementation wiki for more information on the projects and the team.
- Persona Anyalytics
Project Overview: Measuring Persona: User adoption, website adoption, error discovery, etc.
Current Activities:
- Measuring the "bounce rate" -- % of users who don't engage with the dialog after clicking the sign-in/sign-up button
- Investigating A/B testing options for the sign-in dialog
For more information about our metrics effort, visit our Persona Analytics page and KPI Dashboard [LDAP required].
- Identity Key Points of Contact
- Lloyd Hilaiel, Director Engineering
- Dan Callahan, Signin to the Web
- Chris Karloff, Profile in the CLoud (PiCL)
- Jed Parsons, Native B2G & FXOS
- Katie Parlante, KPI & Metrics
- Crystal Beasley, UX
- Tauni Oxborrow, Program Manager
