KeePassXC (KPXC), a recipient of one of the UXFund subgrants, is an open source password manager that is maintained by a small group of volunteer developers. Through this grant, the team partnered with Accessibility Lab and Okthanks to include a significant number of usability and accessibility improvements in their two latest releases, KeePassXC 2.4.0 and 2.5.0.
In the first few months of the grant, Okthanks conducted a new-user impression study, collecting feedback from new users of the KeePassXC tool. This study led to recommendations for user-experience (UX) and user-interface (UI) improvements to make it easier for users to get started with KPXC. Accessibility Lab also evaluated and provided accessibility recommendations for the KPXC tool, website, and browser extension. With their 2.4.0 release in March 2019 and 2.5.0 release in July 2019, KPXC implemented several of these recommendations, along with community recommended UX improvements, such as improving the database creation process.
Updates and improvements made throughout the course of this grant included:
- KeePassXC-Browser Extension was improved to support screen readers, keyboard-only interaction, and scalability.
- KPXC contracted a developer to perform software development and testing of the KeePassXC-Browser extension, with a focus on implementing the accessibility improvements identified by Accessibility Lab.
- KPXC finalized and released the “Getting Started” guide, with the focus of helping users without any experience understand how to use the application.
- KPXC finalized and released the “User Guide,” which deep dives into the major features of KPXC and ensure users can discover and use critical privacy and collaborative features of the application.
- Three maintenance updates to KeePassXC were released, including 6 GitHub pull requests for user experience updates and 7 * GitHub pull requests for user interface updates. These improvements were a direct result of community feedback and incorporating enhanced workflows suggested by the Okthanks team. Community feedback received also led to the KeePassXC-Browser * Extension update which improved user experience and baseline functionality. The “Getting Started” guide and “User Manual,” developed by the documentation writer contracted under the grant, were incorporated directly into the KeePassXC application.
