[OpenID] Feedback requested: New OpenID RP login UX prototype

[Andrew Arnott]

Thanks, Rabbit.

Responses inline.
--
Andrew Arnott
"I [may] not agree with what you have to say, but I'll defend to the death
your right to say it." - S. G. Tallentyre


On Thu, Oct 22, 2009 at 7:01 PM, Rabbit <rabbit at cyberpunkrock.com> wrote:

> I won't sugar coat this. If I encountered this interface in the wild I
> would be furious. I hope you are able to take this criticism constructively
> and improve the user experience.
>
Sure, I don't want you to sugar coat it.  Although your tone throughout this
email suggests that you thought I thought this was all finished and
polished.  It's a "prototype", dude.

>
> FireFox on OSX receives multiple plugin download requests. Obviously these
> are related to InfoCard but "explainable" from a technical perspective
> doesn't translate to "acceptable" from a user perspective. There was also no
> indication as to what the plugins were for and when I attempted to install
> them it failed. That latter criticism may be an issue with FireFox or OSX.
>

I totally agree.  This doesn't happen on Windows, so I didn't see these
problems.  But another mac user reported seeing the same thing.  I have an
idea of how to fix this so please try again in a couple days and tell me if
the problem hasn't gone away.  Yes, it's InfoCard related, but it was not my
intention to throw up all kinds of unpleasantness for those who don't have
InfoCard support.  It's supposed to be a very quiet "light-up" scenario if
you have it, and completely and quietly missing if you don't.


>
> Almost every popup window was irritating and appeared broken. A standard
> user would most likely think they were tricked into clicking an
> advertisement. This somewhat extends into my general criticism towards the
> entire popup standard being promoted (which I won't get into) but even with
> the popup approach there is room for improvement here. If you know the
> OpenID provider you are sending me to, and they do not offer a simple UI for
> popups, at least size the window to avoid horizontal scrollbars.
>
>
> http://s978.photobucket.com/albums/ae262/rabbyte/?action=view&current=Picture3.png
>
> http://s978.photobucket.com/albums/ae262/rabbyte/?action=view&current=Picture4.png
>
> http://s978.photobucket.com/albums/ae262/rabbyte/?action=view&current=Picture5.png


Working within the popup UI is still being developed for the OPs, and each
of them are responsible for making it look good.  Google supports it fully,
as I'm sure you noticed.  Yahoo claims to support it but don't get the
window size right according to the UI extension draft spec and I hope they
fix that or the spec (I don't care which).  myopenid and verisign don't
support it at all, and the larger popup window size I give non-supporters
isn't apparently big enough for their large window demands.  I'll see if I
can fix that by just giving them a bigger window.  Ideally, I hope this
encourages these OPs to shrink their UI so it fits in smaller windows.

Besides that, myopenid and Verisign aren't likely to be displayed in the
final UI kit that I'm building until they meet the
guidelines<http://docs.google.com/Doc?docid=0AXB25E7fZcQCZGY1bm40ampfMTkxaHJ2emZya3M&hl=en>I
wrote up.  RPs can always add them though.

>
>
> You'll also notice that the MyOpenID popup is slightly hiding its security
> feature on the top right. There's just no excuse for that.
>

I agree.  But see above.

>
> The automatic redirecting is absolutely atrocious! Even just trying to test
> this out for feedback was excruciating. It is impossible to change my choice
> once I have made a choice. Page load tries to redirect. Clicking login tries
> to redirect. My history gets mangled and I can't hit the back button.
> Between the popups and the redirects, a standard user might (and should)
> think they have a virus.
>

Now here you've lost me.  Can you explain more precisely what's going on?
 Maybe it's a Mac thing (which I would of course still want to fix), but why
do you say it's impossible to change your choice once you've made one?  If
you click one Provider and log in, you absolutely can pick another provider
the next time you log in (although we make them appear grayer than the rest
to discourage this).  But remember this is targeted at *normal* users --
it's not targeted for testing multiple OPs.  So a normal user would want to
keep clicking the same button in order to avoid splintering their identity.
 That's a common complaint about OpenID: "Which button did I click on last
time?"  Or more practically: "I logged in [with the wrong button] and now
all my stuff is gone!"  Although the other buttons are gray, you can still
click them.

Now what about this "page load tries to redirect".  What does that mean?
 I've seen sites where the Back button takes you to a page that redirects
you "forward" again, which is very aggravating.  But on my browsers, this
doesn't happen.  The back button works as expected.  Can you elaborate about
what's broken?

>
> It also wouldn't hurt to provide a little information about OpenID since it
> is an option. Even linking to a tutorial site to provide more information
> would be helpful (hey! and you could use another popup!). Ok, maybe that
> last remark was a little mean. I appreciate the effort. I really need to put
> together a demo. I really hope you found my feedback useful.
>

Here I disagree with you, but your opinion is appreciated nonetheless.  This
is *not* a "promote OpenID" design.  Some of the loudest feedback I hear
from users who fail to log into RPs is that they don't know what OpenID is
and they leave.  This UI is designed for maximum user conversions *to the
RP's services*, not to OpenID.  RPs want users to log in -- they don't care
whether users know what OpenID is, and users don't visit random RPs to learn
about what OpenID is.

A design requirement is to keep the UI as simple as possible, while
providing flexibility where needed for power users.  So links to learn about
OpenID will be limited to what the RP's attorneys insist on saying for
liability reasons.

Yes, your feedback was helpful -- and can be more so if you can provide some
more detail about the issues I asked for more detail about.

>
> =Rabbit
>
>
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