Log in sucks.
I hate logging in to stuff.
On my own devices, I always tick ‘Remember me’. I never log out. Why should I?
The reasons for logging in are all understandable.
It’s a solution for many problems.
But it’s a bad solution. Passwords are for safes in banks and
usernames are just nothings.
When I try to do something and the machine stops me and shouts at me
Error! You are not logged in! Your authentication failed! You do not
have permissions for this task!, I feel stupid.
And machines are not supposed to make me feel stupid.
And what more, logging in absolutely breaks the user experience.
I get to a blog, I read a post, I read the comments, I like the post, I
want to let the author know, I click “like”.
I get an ERROR MESSAGE. You need to be logged in to do that. Argh.
I log in, or sign up, or ‘forget my password’ (blerg) and then it takes
me to the site’s homepage.
I… wait, homepage? I didn’t ask to be on the damn homepage.
I’ll try to find that post I was reading. I’ll try the “Back” button
but it’d fail because of the POST call. I’ll give up. I’ll leave.
Are you happy, website?
Logging in and maintaining an account is an experience bug that should
be fixed.
But in the meantime, would websites redirect me back to what I was
doing?
Thanks.
I was reading this post by a guy named Stefan a few minutes ago.
I clicked ‘like’ and Posterous asked me to log in. I did, it took me
more than a minute because I forgot the password for my old account, and
then I got to a page with this message:
A perfectly normal turn of events!
But ‘normal’ is such an outstanding word in the web user experience
world.
So, kudos to Posterous.
A good time to try my years-old “tech blog” idea.