Beautiful Authentication: Tear down the barbed wire

People don’t ever specifically want to sign in or create an account – they just want the features that being signed in allows. Somewhere between upselling and onboarding, they will run into the wall around your beautiful garden, and be forced to sign in if they want to get inside. I’ll review the ways you can make sure your gated garden isn’t covered in barbed wire. Although this talk is focused on authentication experiences, the ideas apply to many other kinds of features. I use authentication, and in particular my experience with it at SoundCloud, as a case study.

Video from refresh.rocks:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_qzLmsaUwOs

Transcript

1. Beautiful authentication Tear down the barbed wire
2. Hi, I’m Tiffany @theophani
3. Beautiful authentication Tear down the barbed wire
4. flickr.com/photos/fallstreak_holes/14394586240
5. flickr.com/photos/jonwiley/1465722671
6. Tear down the barbed wire
7. Engagement Engagement Engagement
8. User value
9. The act of signing in has no inherent value
10. Some user experiences are best when they are never “experienced”
11. Authenticated experiences have a high value
12. Signing in is a pain
13. Your product on the other side is the prize
14. Aim: Pain < Prize
15. A lot of pain = Barbed wire
16. The case study: our old auth flow
17. How did we know our authentication was painful?
18. 1. Analyzing support tickets
19. 2. Detailed monitoring of authentication endpoints
20. 3. Usability tests
21. 4. Tracking the conversion funnel
22. What was the nature of the pain we found?
23. Traps: A punishment for entering an expected situation that is not ideal
24. Example Trap: Forgetting your password
25. Forgetting your password is normal
26. Avoid traps: Expect common non-ideal situations
27. Doubled-edged sword: A feature that is meant to protect you, but can also hinder you
28. Example doubled-edged sword: Confirmation modals
29. Example doubled-edged sword: Passwords
34. Passwordless sign-in is as secure as password reset
35. Avoid doubled-edged sword: Keep the protection, remove the hinderance
36. Russian roulette: Forcing someone to make a choice that might be wrong … or not
37. Example of Russian roulette: Making people choose whether they want to sign in or create an account
38. We prompt the user to identify themselves first
41. Example Russian roulette: Making people pick a unique display name during account creation
42. Avoid Russian roulette: Remove risky decisions
43. Friendly fire: When your systems cause errors for the user that are no fault of their own
44. Example of friendly fire: Wrong assumptions about names
45. Example of friendly fire: Wrong assumptions about email addresses
46. Avoid friendly fire: Look at error logs and fix bugs
47. Crossed wires: When users misunderstand what they are doing
48. Example of crossed wires: People started to create an account, but ended up signing in
49. Confusing language: sign in / sign up
50. We changed to: sign in / create account
51. Avoid crossed wires: Make choices distinct
52. What do you measure to see if you reduced the pain?
53. What do you measure to see the pain?
54. Task-completion rate
55. Drop-off points
56. Time to complete
57. Usability tests
58. Volume of support tickets
60. Thank you! Tiffany Conroy – @theophani