Talking Users

Up very early this morning to chair a meeting on the Publisher Interface Study. A very simple proposition really – how do we improve the user experience when logging in with federated access, and can we get international agreement on this position?

Mark’s presentation is a very good overview of some of the differences of approach that we are dealing with and have to improve if we are not going to disenfranchise users.

Rhys Smith, who carried out the study on behalf of Cardiff University and Kidderminster College had a very simple message:

Users do not want to understand what is going on. They want to get to the content as quickly and easily as possible. Do not try and describe it, users won’t understand it. Users want one simple term they can learn and look for.

One of the big problems that was discussed was that academic users are not necessarily the main customer base for a lot of publishers. People queried why these publishers don’t consider using OpenID rather than providing usernames and passwords themselves. It may be worth promoting this as a focus alongside the use of an educational log-in process (OpenID / eduID?). Can we work with Kantara to provide a combined voice of federated technologies (including OpenID, Apple, Microsoft, Google) to talk to browser vendors to implement a cookie approach?

This is a much loftier aim than improving the current user experience on Service Providers, which we will take forward regardless….but it does seem possible that all of the new access management technologies have a real opportunity to work together.