Charter submission for Account Chooser Working Group

Tue Aug 30 00:49:59 UTC 2011

Hi Eric

I'm getting hung up on some semantics in your proposal. An important objective of a specification is to standardize a practise to enable interoperability. In your proposal, you describe the specification to consist of guidelines. Guidelines sound like "nice to have" attributes rather than requirements. If this is a best practises document, I don't think it needs to go through the specs committee. If it will be branded OpenID and there are compliance requirements, then it does.

Is your proposal to create "guidelines" or "requirements"?

-- Dick

On 2011-08-29, at 4:59 PM, Eric Sachs wrote:

> >> Can you give us a idea as to what the content and format of the design spec might look like?
> 
> There is a bit of intro to answers those questions at the top of https://sites.google.com/site/oauthgoog/workinggroupcharter
> 
> The goal is to look something like the section of the existing OpenID user interface extension that has guidelines outside protocol specs.  However the UI guidelines would be much more detailed then the few sentences in that spec.  We posted an initial rough spec using that approach.  Some people have suggested adding one bit of protocol to the spec which is a way for the RP to tell the IDP that it is implementing an account chooser so that the IDP could do something different, just as it does for the popup spec.  However we have not been able to determine what the "different" behavior would be.
> 
> There may be related output from the work in this area like open source JS code.  There will hopefully also be easier to read implementation guides that are not in the spec format, but include things like mocks and flowcharts.  There are some examples of something like that at http://accountchooser.com/ux.html.  However that type of output seemed to be outside the bounds of what a WG charter should cover.
> 
> 
> 
> On Mon, Aug 29, 2011 at 4:46 PM, Allen Tom <allentomdude at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi Eric,
> 
> Thanks for submitting the Account Chooser  WG proposal. As far as I know, this is the first time a non protocol spec WG has been proposed.  
> 
> Can you give us a idea as to what the content and format of the design spec might look like? Will it be a set of wireframes? Mockups? Flowcharts? Will it cover only the login form? Will it also cover account linking and account recovery?
> 
> Thanks,
> Allen
> 
> 
> On Mon, Aug 29, 2011 at 10:46 AM, Eric Sachs <esachs at google.com> wrote:
> This is a formal submission to the OpenID Specs Council to approve the Account Chooser Working Group.  The draft charter is posted at https://sites.google.com/site/oauthgoog/workinggroupcharter and the current version has been copied below.  If possible, we would like to get a response from the Specifications Council before the September OpenID Summit so we can use that event for more discussions on this topic.
> 
> 
> 
> Name
> 
> OpenID Account Chooser Working Group
> 
> Background Information
> 
> The term "NASCAR UI" is used to refer to one of the most common user experiences on Relying Parties to enable users to login with an identity provider.  There are a number of known usability problems with that UI, especially in terms of supporting a large number of identity providers, and for offering users the ability to log in with either an identity provider or a traditional email/password.  The identity community has had discussions about building a “cloud based” identity selector to deal with some of those problems.  The idea has been to mix the user experience advantages of Information Cards, the popularity of consumer identity providers, and still support large numbers of identity providers as InCommon has done.  The end result is a user experience that is being called an Account Chooser.  For background, see accountchooser.com.
> 
> The account chooser model can in some cases improve usability on a website even if it does not support identity providers, or a website that only supports identity providers, or a website that only supports a single identity provider.  The account chooser model can also allow a relying party to customize the set of buttons it shows during the "add account" flow based on IP geolocation of the user to help promote a larger number of identity providers around the world instead of just a small number of providers as is generally shown on a NASCAR UI.  The working group will discuss all of these use cases.
> 
> Statement of Purpose
> 
> This workgroup intends to produce user interface guidelines for how a relying party can implement an account chooser for both adding accounts, and selecting an account that was previously added.
> 
> Scope
> 
> Produce a specification for the account chooser user interface guidelines.
> 
> Out of Scope 
> 
> The working group is not expected to define a protocol specification.
> 
> Specifications 
> 
> OpenID Account Chooser User Interface 1.0.
> 
> Anticipated audience
> 
> All those interested in improving the usability of relying parties.
> 
> Language of business
> 
> English. 
> 
> Method of work
> 
> Mailing list discussion. Posting of intermediate drafts in the OpenID Wiki. Virtual conferencing on an ad-hoc basis. 
> 
> Basis for completion of the activity
> 
> The OpenID Account Chooser User Interface 1.0 final specification is completed. 
> 
> Proposers
> 
> Basheer Tome, basheer at basheertome.com, independent
> John Bradley, jbradley at me.com, independent
> Nat Sakimura, sakimura at gmail.com, NRI
> Kevin Long, kevin at janrain.com, Janrain
> Pam Dingle, pdingle at pingidentity.com, Ping
> Eric Sachs, Esachs at google.com, Google
> Chuck Sievert, csievert at google.com, Google
> Wei Tu, weitu at google.com Google
> Andrew Dahley, andyd at google.com, Google
> Chris Messina, messina at google.com, Google
> 
> Initial Editors
> 
> Eric Sachs, Esachs at google.com>, Google
> 
> 
> 
> 
> -- 
> Eric Sachs | Senior Product Manager | esachs at google.com 
> 
> _______________________________________________
> specs mailing list
> specs at lists.openid.net
> http://lists.openid.net/mailman/listinfo/openid-specs

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