ActsAsFlinn

OpenID User Experience is Piss Poor

With piss poor OpenID setups providers are missing the opportunity to leverage their #1 asset, their user base. Recent OpenID user experience research from Yahoo and Google show something obvious – they both suck at providing OpenID. OpenID in its most basic form allows the user to supply a URL. Even if that’s the best UX you can come up with, don’t give the user a hash they can’t remember (Yahoo!). But that’s not the best you can do. There is no standard that says the user has to supply their own URL, you can should build it for them. Also, I don’t care what anyone says about fracturing the standard, GOOG is right – email is the obvious choice.

Facebook Connect is getting crazy adoption because it’s easy and the user doesn’t have to make a choice about what IDP to use. FBC is going to continue to mop up because they have a huge user base that is arguably more savvy than other large IDP’s. Facebook is making it easy to just get to what you want without caring about login.

Implementing OpenID shouldn’t be completely promiscuous. Choose a partner and be happy with your choice. What I mean by that is, if you think Yahoo!, AOL, Google are going to provide you with the right registered user base just pick one. Present only one or two IDP options and maybe an advanced option for power users if you really want it.

If you’re consuming OpenID and not making it simple for users you’re missing the boat. If you’re providing OpenID and trying to educate the user or filling your page with warning triangles and disclaimers your putting holes in your ship.