[OpenID] XAuth critiques

[Chris Messina]

It's also unclear how much of existing UX work applies to modern distributed
identity systems since:

1. there seems to be growing desire by people to reuse accounts they already
have in more places than previously, creating more diverse surface areas for
these kinds of interfaces to pop up
2. this diversity creates a significant challenge to create a single,
uniform interface given the malleability of different environments,
especially when the desire to support many unaffiliated providers.

Furthermore, not all identity providers have access to or have been
authorized to provide sufficient capabilities, which leads to the kind of
confusion and frustration that both users and technologists face today.

>From a somewhat orthogonal perspective, this post by Sachin from Posterous
captures one attitude that must be overcome if we're going to actually make
any progress with more modern or progressive service providers:

http://sachin.posterous.com/accounts-get-in-the-way

Chris

On Sun, Jun 13, 2010 at 11:51 AM, John Panzer <jpanzer at google.com> wrote:

> Just a note: Proprietary UX in the IdP or browser can be a consistent
> experience even if different users get different experiences.
>
> --
> John Panzer / Google
> jpanzer at google.com / abstractioneer.org <http://www.abstractioneer.org/> /
> @jpanzer
>
>
>
> On Sun, Jun 13, 2010 at 8:51 AM, Nate Klingenstein <ndk at internet2.edu>wrote:
>
>> Shade'n'others,
>>
>> Research performed on federated identity at Cardiff University, supported
>> by JISC, has suggested the opposite.  Users just wanted a consistent
>> experience every time, and didn't enormously care what that experience
>> happens to be.  So far as I'm aware, the analysis didn't include the NASCAR
>> approach being used by OpenID parties as an option, because it simply
>> doesn't scale for us with IdP's numbering in the 1000's.
>>
>>
>> http://www.jisc-collections.ac.uk/media/documents/jisc_collections/study-v1.0.pdf
>>
>> I'm thus a supporter of the ULX work being done in Kantara, and although
>> I'd Really Really prefer that the OpenID community be participants in the
>> work that's already ongoing and yielding good results, there are probably
>> advantages to any interface working group here too.
>>
>> Take care,
>> Nate.
>>
>> ----- Original Message -----
>> From: "SitG Admin" <sysadmin at shadowsinthegarden.com>
>> To: "Peter Watkins" <peterw at tux.org>
>> Cc: openid-general at lists.openid.net, openid-specs at lists.openid.net
>> Sent: Wednesday, June 9, 2010 9:02:55 AM GMT -07:00 US/Canada Mountain
>> Subject: Re: XAuth critiques
>>
>> >>  This would certainly be a poor UI.  I can imagine better ones, but
>> more to
>> >>  the point, the marketplace can decide what the best UI is in this
>> case.
>> >
>> >Better ones like what?  I'm serious. The current XAuth spec has an
>> >IdP/Extender
>> >deciding upfront which RP should be allowed to see the end user has a
>> >relationship to the IdP. I cannot imagine how you'd build a UI to fix
>> that
>> >problem. If you can imagine a UI improvement, please describe it!
>>
>> I believe John's argument here is that UI development can be
>> crowd-sourced:
>>
>> We *can* go to all the trouble of imagining better ones, but why
>> *should* we when all the differently-thinking users out there will
>> demand their own best changes once they see the prototype?
>>
>> -Shade
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Chris Messina
Open Web Advocate, Google

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