While at Chaordix I did some work to improve the registration and sign-in workflow for the company’s core product.
Problem
Some of the problems with the old workflow included:
- Awkward validation of agreement to terms of service
- Unhelpful error choosing a social sign-in option without first going through registration workflow
- Unhelpful dead end choosing to register using social sign-in when an account already exists
- Unnecessary activation step when using social sign-in
Solution
Applying some research into the well-trodden field of sign-in and registration workflows, I redesigned our experience with the goal of removing as many barriers as possible to authenticating a user and landing them inside the site. Most of the improvements directly address the shortcomings documented above:
- Attempting social sign-in when no account exists automatically streams the user into the registration flow.
- Attempting to register with social media when an account exists automatically performs a login.
- Activation step is skipped for social sign-in (as we assume the social media account has already done the work of verifying things like email addresses)
- Also, default alias is pulled from the minimum information provided by the social media account.
- Agreeing to terms of service is no longer a challenging experience while trying to decide how to register/sign in, but a separate step right before activating the account.
Testing
I did a single round of testing where I asked a moderately Internet-literate friend to complete the various registration and sign-in workflows, using my HTML mockup—he was able to do this with very little trouble.