Signup / Login Flow UX Feedback

Brad Frost says it all in one of his recent articles:
http://bradfrost.com/blog/post/dont-get-clever-with-login-forms/

I also think the whole process is a bit of a pain. All I want is to have my password manager login for me...

I've wrestled with this question in my various Ux roles for a long time.

My hunch is that though it's secure (more secure than passwords, given what terrible passwords most people choose), it's not a great idea to force signup/login via email link rather than password.

Reasons:

• Context switching from signup/login to email is painful for users, especially on phones.
• There's a problem with making sure when users enter their email address that they're human; Medium and others solve this using Recaptchas, but it's even more painful for users, every time they log in, not only to context switch to email, but to have to fill in an ever more demanding Recaptcha on the way there.
• Advanced users have the password problem solved, e.g. with password auto-fill in their browser or with 1Password; it's not great to tell them that they have to do it the more painful way instead.

Hope that helps!

It's horrible. Why would you force your user to open another app to use the product they paid for? Why would you make them wait for a business critical app if email delivery is slow that day?

Your job as a service provider is to provide service, not manufacture hoops for your paying customers to jump through.

It's only an acceptable use if your targeted audience is people who are extremely technically unsavvy. Even then, they have to know how to switch apps. Bad, bad bad.

Interesting idea. On one hand I like it because it eliminates the need to remember a password, but on the other hand, sometimes email takes a bit to come in and you risk losing the user's interest if they get distracted by their inbox while they're waiting for the login email.

It's always a risk to adopt a pattern like this that isn't the "standard" flow that your users are expecting.

I love the idea and it is the way we are going forward with in our project (onefinaldoc.com).

I see some people don't like this because they use LastPass or 1Password and think going to email is slow.

Despite that, I still think it is great. One of the pros of this approach is that if you pay the service for your employees, you know they won't have access if you removed their email @yourcompany.com.

Imo that's the way to go. Security wise, I would not want store any of my users passwords and also users more often than not, are not careful with their passwords. Ux wise, imo passwords is an old pattern, while it may be faster for the user to login, authentication is a one time effort (on each device), and if your app is great, I'm pretty sure no user will mind it. Personally I don't want to maintain any passwords and prefer social auth or magic link/code, given the choice

One problem with this approach is if the email goes to Spam or otherwise is flagged by Gmail etc. A technical user might know where to look, but a non-technical user might just assume it's not working. Your email setup becomes a SPOF effectively locking users out of your application.

I find it suitable and appropriate. An automatic sign in by clicking on email link will make things simple.

I signed up a few days ago, and spent too much time trying to reset my password.