Thanks Caroline.This is for creation of an online account at a major NA wireless provider. The account would contain most of that person's personal information, so I consider it high security, perhaps just below that required for online banking.
Since it is for a wireless provider, there's a good chance they may be using a mobile device to enter this information.
My gut reaction was that b/c of the sensitive nature of the personal information, my expectation was that this info would be masked.
Anthony On 23-Jul-09, at 11:54 AM, Caroline Jarrett wrote:
There's been quite a lot of chat in the blogosphere about password marking(generically) since Jakob Nielsen published an alertbox against it: http://www.useit.com/alertbox/passwords.html and then Bruce Schneier, who gave him some security advice, somewhat recanted: http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2009/06/the_problem_wit_2.htmlI'm not yet seeing convincing evidence from user research that inclines meto one view or the other.Jakob's piece talks about mobile, in particular, and there are certainly major issues in trying to put an accurate password into a mobile device. Togive just a few factors: inadequate keyboards, small screens, awkward contexts, possibility of being overlooked.What I'm not yet seeing is much consideration of what I call 'relationship'issues. In this area, those would include the reason why the user iscreating/entering the password, the relative importance of this securitycompared to the value of what lies behind it, and so on.So coming back to your question: what sort of account is being created? Are users likely to be feeling especially sensitive for any reason about thepersonal information or whatever they will divulge to the account? Orespecially casual? Are they likely to be shoulder-surfed? Or using a mobile?What do they expect to happen on a site of this nature?Broadly, the plain text echoing is likely to be reassuring for a mid- to-lowimportance site that is used in (mostly) private circumstances. If it's a high-security site or is likely to be used in public circumstances, then keep as much private (i.e. masked) as you can.And try to get some users' views on the matter, preferably by getting themto try a prototype. Best Caroline Jarrett "Forms that work: Designing web forms for usability" www.formsthatwork.com Effortmark Ltd Usability - Forms - Content Phone: 01525 370 379 Mobile: 0799 057 0647 International: +44 152 537 0379 16 Heath Road Leighton Buzzard Bedfordshire LU7 3AB UK ________________________________________________________________ Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ....... [email protected] Unsubscribe ................ http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines ............ http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .................. http://www.ixda.org/help
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