user experience discussions?

[Ryan Barrett]

On Sat, 4 Nov 2006, Joshua Viney wrote:

> Recently there was a very active discussion re: best practices regarding
> login and whether email addresses or usernames are easier for users. It may

out of curiosity, was there a conclusion? we did a usability study on this a
while ago, and we ended up preferring usernames. the main reason was that
people often have multiple email addresses. when they come back to the login
screen, if they don't remember which email address they used, they tend to
drop off.

(that was a while ago, though, and i don't remember the details, so don't
quote me.)

on the other hand, people are much more likely to remember their email address
than their username for a given site. maybe the ideal solution is to let them
tell you *all* of their email addresses, so they can log in with any of them.

of course, that requires action on their part, and raises privacy issues, etc.
sigh. damn tanstaafl!

-Ryan

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