[OpenID] Yahoo OpenID UX Study

[SitG Admin]

Depressing results.

>After a bit more coaching, the users managed to get to the Yahoo OP,
>where a lot of them got lost. First time Yahoo OpenID users must
>navigate through a few screens, where they have to solve a CAPTCHA,
>agree to a TOS, and also are given opportunities to learn more about
>OpenID, setup a custom OpenID identifier, setup an anti-phishing Sign-in
>Seal for their Yahoo Login screen, or to see a directory of OpenID RPs.
>In many cases, users were overwhelmed by all these options,

I haven't gone through such a signup process to get my OpenID, but I 
can tell this much from the description you gave here - if I were 
going through several pages, each making an additional requirement of 
me, it would trigger some red flags for the similarity to certain 
"Buy this cheap thing and get an expensive product absolutely for 
free!" scams where the primary objective is to obtain the user's 
E-mail address for spamming the hell out of them, and the secondary 
objective is to trick them into buying additional cheap products. 
This second part works by showing the user a link to the "Get your 
free stuff!" page, promising that this will be the last step, and 
only permitting them to see that there's ANOTHER step (itself 
promised, in turn, to be the last) when they've committed to another 
purchase. Your streamlining of the process is a very good idea, and I 
think that, however short the process may *appear* to be, you should 
consider some sort of map along the side showing the users a visual 
representation of how many steps there are in the process, and where 
that user is at the moment.

-Shade