Jared M. Spool

Unintuitive and Insecure: Fixing the Failures of Authentication UX

Saturday, March 25 2:15 pm – 3:00 pm

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Session Summary

“Which username did I use?” “Do they want my email address or my nickname?” “Which password did I use?” “What was my favorite vegetable when I created this account?”

Nothing wrecks a great user experience like a login form. Our password rules make it hard to remember what we’ve used, and stupid security questions lock us out of our accounts. And none of these security gymnastics actually prevent our personal information from leaking into the world. (In fact, we often inadvertently make it easier.) If it’s not usable, it’s not secure.

Unusable authentication systems are a bellwether of poor end-to-end experience. Once you’ve frustrated a user with their account creation or session authentication, it’s extremely hard to win them back. Security isn’t sexy, but when we get it right, we reduce risk and increase user satisfaction. In this entertaining presentation, Jared will explain how to make authentication design a top priority in your experience architecture. He’ll show you where the real risks are and why you shouldn’t trust others to handle your design’s security elegantly.

Jared will walk you through:

About the Speaker

Jared M. Spool is a co-founder of Center Centre and the founder of UIE.

If you’ve ever seen Jared speak about user experience (UX) design, you know that he’s probably the most effective and knowledgeable communicator on the subject today. He started working in the field of usability in 1978, before the term “usability” was ever associated with computers.

While he led UIE, the industry research firm he started in 1988, the field of UX design emerged and Jared helped define what makes UX designers successful all over the world. UIE’s world-class research organization produces conferences and workshops all over the world and for companies in every industry.

In 2016, with Dr. Leslie Jensen-Inman, he opened Center Centre, a new school in Chattanooga, TN to create the next generation of industry-ready UX Designers. They created a revolutionary approach to vocational training, infusing Jared’s decades of UX experience with Leslie’s mastery of experience-based learning methodologies.

You’ll also find him as the conference chair and keynote speaker at the annual UI Conference and UX Immersion Conference, and he manages to squeeze in a fair amount of writing time. He is author of the book, Web Usability: A Designer’s Guide and co-author of Web Anatomy: Interaction Design Frameworks that Work.

You’ll find his writing at uie.com. You can also follow his adventures on the Twitters at @jmspool, where he tweets daily about UX design, design strategy, design education, and the wondrous customer service habits of the airline industry.