[OpenID] Fwd: Yahoo!: Mainstream Has No Idea what OpenID Is

[David Recordon]

Piece on SitePoint about Yahoo!'s usability study.  Left the following  
comment which is still in moderation:

Josh, I’m quite honestly not that surprised by the results of the  
Yahoo! usability study. I completely agree that the results are quite  
informative of where we as a community need to focus assuming we want  
to see mainstream adoption of OpenID. When we look at OpenID along a  
traditional adoption curve we are still in an early adopter phase as  
the technology gets worked out, adapts to feedback from implementers,  
and becomes easier to use and more prevalent.

I’m certainly not discouraged by this result, rather glad that it now  
becomes far more clear what we need to tackle moving forward!


Yahoo!: Mainstream Has No Idea what OpenID Is
  SitePoint Blogs 10/14/08 12:52 PM Josh Catone News & Trends  
mainstream openid study usability yahoo Comments
Yahoo! today released the results of the OpenID usability study (PDF).  
The good news, says Yahoo!, is that after being explained the idea  
behind OpenID, most participants saw the utility of being able to sign  
into multiple web sites using a single sign-on and not having to sign  
up for more than one account.

The bad news, though, is that not one participant — who were “several  
experienced Yahoo! users (representative of [their] mainstream  
audience)” — had heard of OpenID. Several didn’t notice the additional  
option of signing into Yahoo! using OpenID or using their Yahoo!  
username and password as OpenID credentials elsewhere and didn’t  
understand what that meant until it was explained to them. Yahoo! has  
supported OpenID since January of 2008.

Users were also confused by Yahoo!’s implementation, which asks them  
to choose their OpenID provider when signing then, then auto-populates  
the login box with that provider’s URL. Users were confused when they  
weren’t presented with the password box they’re used to.

Despite of seeing the upside of OpenID, some respondents to the Yahoo!  
survey expressed concern over the security of having one set of login  
credentials for a multitude of sites. “I’m a little fearful about  
global stuff. I prefer to have different passwords than one global  
one. Once someone gets that one password, they have free access to  
roam,” said one. Others thought that the process of signing up for an  
OpenID account was so cumbersome, it didn’t sell them on the  
convenience of the concept.

The key takeaway here is probably that even if OpenID is ready for the  
mainstream, the mainstream doesn’t seem to be ready for OpenID. It  
could definitely benefit from being simplified (in terms of both  
signing up and signing in), but the main thing that needs to happen  
for average users to begin to adopt OpenID is that it needs to be  
pitched in a completely different way.

Yahoo! advises that publishers “promote the utility, not the  
technology. To reach the majority of users who aren’t familiar with  
OpenID as a technology, promote the ability to log in using an  
existing account, not ‘OpenID’ itself.” Further, says Yahoo!, there  
needs to be strong partnerships between OpenID providers and relying  
parties in order for OpenID to work as a broadly accepted login  
paradigm. “Users are focused on tasks, not technology; undiscoverable  
or confusing experiences directly impact the success” of the providers  
and relying parties, says Yahoo!

The test results were disappointing for Yahoo!, said Yahoo! Membership  
Architect Allen Tom, but helpful. “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 head-pounding  
coming from the other side of the one-way mirror. Certainly there is a  
lot of work to be done on the OpenID user experience front,” he wrote  
in blog post.

OpenID is fundamentally a sound idea, but these test results  
demonstrate that for most users it is not an ideal solution and has  
not been explained to them very well at all.




-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.openid.net/pipermail/openid-general/attachments/20081014/7810ee43/attachment-0002.htm>