[OpenID] Yahoo OpenID UX Study

[Paul Madsen]

can the Yahoo recommendation to clearly distinguish between local and 
OpenID UI be reconciled with Google's recent research - which proposes 
conflating them?

This would seem to me to be a pretty fundamental UI principle (and I 
have no insight as to which is preferrable)

Paul

Allen Tom wrote:
> Hi All,
>
> I'm happy to announce that Yahoo is releasing the results of a usability 
> study that we did for OpenID. The test subjects were several experienced 
> Yahoo users (who are representative of our mainstream audience) who were 
> observed as they tried to sign into a product review site using the 
> Yahoo OpenID service.
>
> A link to the PDF of the study is here:
> http://developer.yahoo.com/openid/bestpractices.html
>
> First, the good news. After the users completed their tests, we 
> explained OpenID to them, and they all recognized the value of being 
> able to easily sign into a new site without having to create a new ID 
> and password. They also appreciated the potential of using their Yahoo 
> OpenIDs to automatically verify their Yahoo email address without having 
> to do manual email verification.
>
> Now the bad news. None of the users had heard of OpenID before, and none 
> of them even noticed the OpenID sign-in box which was displayed below 
> the traditional email/password login form on the site. In many cases, 
> the test subjects entered their Yahoo email address and Yahoo password 
> to try to login. (We had told the test subjects that they could sign 
> into the site using their Yahoo account without having to register). 
> (See Page 5 of the study)
>
> Eventually, we coached the test subjects to use the site's OpenID ID 
> Selector, and they still had some problems with selector's Yahoo 
> option.  In most cases, the users were confused by the 
> "http://yahoo.com" that was autofilled in the OpenID sign in box, and 
> were still looking for a form to enter their YahooID and password. (See 
> pages 7 and 8)
>
> 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, and failed 
> to return to the RP because they were sidetracked. (See pages 10-14 of 
> the study)
>
> Finally, after a little more coaching, the test subjects finally 
> returned back to the product review site, where they were presented with 
> a registration form to setup a profile. Obviously, it would have been 
> more satisfying if the user was able to directly go to the intended 
> destination. (see page 15)
>
> As a follow up, we asked the test subjects to pretend that some time had 
> passed and that they were to revisit the site and to sign in again. In 
> many cases, they tried to sign in by typing in their Yahoo email address 
> and password into the Login form. (see  page 17)
>
> Observing these tests was more than a bit frustrating for the Yahoo 
> OpenID team, and the test subjects may have been distracted by the 
> sounds of the groans and headpounding coming from the other side of the 
> one way mirror. Certainly there is a lot of work to be done on the 
> OpenID UX front.
>
> On the Yahoo side of things, we streamlined our OP last week, and 
> removed as much as we could. We removed the CAPTCHA and slimmed down the 
> OP to just a single screen, and focused the UI to get the user back to 
> the RP. We expect that RPs will enjoy a much higher success rate for 
> users signing in with their Yahoo OpenID.
>
> On the RP side of things, our recommendation is that they emphasize to 
> users that they can sign in with an existing account, specifically their 
> YahooID.  We believe that the YahooID, as well has IDs from other 
> providers, have a higher brand awareness than OpenID. We also believe 
> that first time users signing in with an OpenID should be able to go 
> directly to their intended destination after signing in, instead of 
> having to complete additional registration. Hopefully, as 
> SimpleReg/AttributeExchange are more widely supported (Yahoo does not 
> currently support them), RPs will no longer feel the need to force the 
> user through an additional registration form after signing in with an 
> OpenID.
>
> I'll be happy to discuss the findings of our first UX study, as well as 
> suggestions for improving the entire end-to-end OpenID UX.
>
> Allen
>
>
>
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>
>   

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Paul Madsen            e:paulmadsen @ ntt-at.com
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