I sat down with my wife to change some of her credentials on various sites (and to make sure the info was in Bitwarden(!)). She’s a smart person, but mistrustful of whether computers make her life easier. This experience did not reassure her.
We ran into a number of little problems where Bitwarden didn’t work as she expected.
Each was a “stopper” - she had to ask me about the next step to continue
I skirted several situations where Bitwarden’s default behavior would have lost information. (I knew how to avoid the problem and said, “Just do this…”)
In sum, these hiccups and problems would have resulted in her saying, “Bitwarden is too hard. I won’t use it.” Update: She did say, “Bitwarden is not any fun.”
@Kevin_Harris@all - would it be worth me writing up specifics of what I saw? Would anyone care about these observations? Many thanks.
Though I would like to remark, that if your wife isn’t used to these processes… there is a whole lot of software I can think of, where you can do silly things, if you are not used of using it in that certain way…
And though I don’t want to downplay it - and see some problems as well - it is usually recommended to get acquainted to such a software step by step, setting everything up etc. and thereby getting to know the software better and better.
And another remark: I guess the Bitwarden team is working on a better “onboarding experience” (saw it in the last vault hours - and there is something on the roadmap, if I’m not mistaken).
But it’ll take a lot of time to create the narrative of what we saw, what we thought it was going to do, and what really happens.
I’ll note that these are not problems like, “Bitwarden didn’t save my password” or “Bitwarden saved the wrong stuff”.
The obervations are more like, “I’m looking at the window, and there must be a way to do X, but I don’t see anything obvious…”
(And since I’m a techie and have worked a lot with the interface, I can tell my wife, “Just do this…” and get the job done. But that doesn’t smooth any of the “sharp edges” that hassle newcomers.)
Finally, I’ll note that none of the suggestions do great violence to the existing GUI: virtually all of them use existing mechanisms but with intelligent defaults.
So my question remains: would anyone care about these observations if I spent the time to collect them? I could envision posting a screen recording to Youtube that showed off the problem, if I knew that someone would actually pay attention. Kevin? @Kevin_Harris Thanks again
PS I mentioned this note to my wife, who gave me the updated quote in the subject line, “Bitwarden is not any fun.” I am hopeful that someone would be willing to review any comments I sent in… Thanks again
@richb-hanover Aside the details - you are aware of the upcoming “UI refresh” (and possibly for UX therefore as well?!) for the browser extensions? And based on that, for the new native mobile apps as well… and in the end, I guess, also for the desktop app and web vault?
That is expected to be released around the end of this year…
So, I don’t know - feedback is already wanted I guess. Maybe something already is on the radar of the team (and got already an overhaul?), maybe some things are not ?!?
@Kevin_Harris How can I get on the “beta tester” list? I have decades of professional software development experience. I have been the project lead for a couple successful commercial products. I write careful bug reports, describing what I saw and exactly what happened.
I would be delighted to offer feedback on the new version, and would even facilitate a session with my wife. (Hopefully, she would agree that Bitwarden is no longer “not any fun”…)
Rich, thanks for starting this thread. I can relate totally with the experience you had with your wife.
My wife is not IT or tech-savvy at all, while I worked in IT for years before retiring.
I installed the BW Firefox extension on wife’s Win PC a few days ago (to stop using FF password mgr) and she’s not happy atm.
So I’d look forward to any details you’d care to post re your experience, etc. I also had not heard abt the upcoming bw UI revamp and agree there’s room for improvement. Will be staying tuned for further news. Good luck with your wife!
The Beta Programs section seems to offer Android and iOS versions. I’m particularly interested in the browser extension. Is that getting a makeover as well? Thanks
Android and iOS apps were recently rewritten from the ground-up to replace the programming libraries they did not like, with the goal of “like behavior”. UI updates are next on the roadmap. Unknown if they will have public-betas for that.
Thanks for that pointer. I had seen the Roadmap document, but didn’t know how to read it (is the browser extension “in flight/development”, or still in planning stages?)
I address the rest of this comment to the project management team: is there an opportunity for additional user feedback either for the existing GUI, or for the proposed interface? Many thanks
Thanks. I did follow the link, and actually filled out the survey.
My conclusion is that I cannot draw any conclusions from looking at the screen shots. They are all very pretty, but it’s the dynamic interaction - all the “little bits” of how they work together - that make the difference.
I anxiously await an opportunity to try the browser extension myself. I was a professional software tester in a past life, and would even be willing to try any alpha-test versions that are ready for others to look at.
