Improving the User Experience

Putting the “rated” into federated
improving the user experience
Andy Powell
@andypowe11

Usability 101
“the study of the ease with which people can employ a particular tool or other human-made object in order to achieve a particular goal” (Wikipedia)

A framework for usability
learnability: how easy is it for users to accomplish basic tasks the first time they encounter the design?
efficiency: once users have learned the design, how quickly can they perform tasks?
memorability: when users return to the design after a period of not using it, how easily can they re establish proficiency?
errors: how many errors do users make, how severe are these errors, and how easily can they recover from the errors?
satisfaction: how pleasant is it to use the design?

Discovery, access and use
with federated access management, “usability” covers a lot of ground
from discovery (Google search vs. institutional portal)
…thru access… (the publisher’s website)
to use (having the thing on your desktop)

Even ‘access’ spans multiple players
the publisher’s website
the federation WAYF service (in some cases)
the institutional identity provider (IdP)

From perspective of the user
(and the user’s institution)
the institutional IdP is always the same
but every publisher website has different look and feel (for login)
some use the WAYF, some don’t
not easy for the institution to provide ‘help’ documentation that covers all cases

From perspective of the publisher
every user sees the same website
but each user has different IdP (and possibly WAYF)
not easy for the publisher to provide ‘help’ documentation that covers everyone

And… wider context
need for global publishers to accommodate multiple‘academic’ federations
need for publishers to handlenon-academic audiences (local usernames/passwords, pay-per-view, etc.)
need for publishers to handle social media (Facebook, Google, Twitter, etc.)

3 examples…
of current practice

Some ongoing work…
back in 2009, JISC commissioned a “Publisher Interface Study” by Rhys Smith at Cardiff
improved WAYF
embedded discovery module for Shibboleth (by Rod Widdowson, Steading System Software)
KantaraUniversal Login Experience (ULX) Working Group
Google

Conclusions
usability across federated login is hard
variety of practice by today’s publishers
variety of exploratory work in progress
need to use this to drive more consistency
no longer just an ‘academic’ problem (c.f. Kantara and Google work)
at Eduserv, we are watching this space

Improving the User Experience

by Eduserv on Mar 14, 2011

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Improving the User Experience — Presentation Transcript