Corvus Consulting

Lament for a previous time isn’t a sentiment that gets much traffic in the world o’ tech; we tend to buy into the narrative that Time + Enthusiasm * Ingenuity = Progress. Things only get better, and previous times are best forgotten as we march forward. A while back, in a group design session wrestling with building an interaction flow around OpenID signin, Tara broke up the churning and reminded me to question that narrative with a comment:

Remember when signing in was easy?

It sounds a bit nostalgic, and nostalgia that isn’t fun kitch is almost a dirty thing in tech, an impure thought that prefers an older, simpler way over the new hotness. Tara wasn’t pining for a golden age of authentication that never was. Instead, through the nostalgic tone, she was us cluing into a powerful truth about how somewhat-technical or non-technical people approach changes in technology and the challenges that OpenID faces.

Technorati Tags: OpenID, philosophy, software

I need to say that I think OpenID should and will succeed. As an alternate to the usual means of signing into websites, it’s a step forward in consolidating online identity around the individual person, and has the potential to improve the overall security of our online lives. 37signals has a good summary of the advantages the OpenID offers now, even in its early days.

But we’re not at the point where a non-technical web user can comfortably use OpenID. My first few uses of the new hotness weren’t comfortable, not because they were that hard to understand, but because they weren’t familiar. What used to be a no-brainer almost since childhood – enter your user name and password – had changed into a round-trip between different sites. After going down this path a few times, the uncertainty faded and I’m very happy and comfortable signing in with my OpenID.

But I’m in the minority here. I like tech stuff, I like feeling smart by getting through unfamiliar territory, I like the philosophy of OpenID and believe in it, and I needed to understand it for my work with Ma.gnolia, an early OpenID consumer. Most people, I think, won’t want to go through that learning process on the basis of the stated benefits because they’re fairly abstract until you start using OpenID. The experience isn’t compelling from the start, and regardless of the intellectual advantages we tend to evaluate the worth of the new with how it compares with the known experience of the old and familiar.

I don’t have a solution, sadly. It’s a very tough problem to crack and it will take many design iterations by different people in different scenarios trying to make it work for the right pattern to emerge. When it does, though, the old way will feel old and outdated, and the web will become a friendlier, more trustworthy place to work and play.