Andy Powell, Eduserv; presentation given at the OpenAthens seminar: Work smarter not harder with FAM. March 2011

1. Putting the “rated” into federated improving the user experience Andy Powell @andypowe11

2. Usability 101 “the study of the ease with which people can employ a particular tool or other human-made object in order to achieve a particular goal” (Wikipedia)

3. A framework for usability learnability: how easy is it for users to accomplish basic tasks the first time they encounter the design? efficiency: once users have learned the design, how quickly can they perform tasks? memorability: when users return to the design after a period of not using it, how easily can they re establish proficiency? errors: how many errors do users make, how severe are these errors, and how easily can they recover from the errors? satisfaction: how pleasant is it to use the design?

4. Discovery, access and use with federated access management, “usability” covers a lot of ground from discovery (Google search vs. institutional portal) …thru access… (the publisher’s website) to use (having the thing on your desktop)

5. Even ‘access’ spans multiple players the publisher’s website the federation WAYF service (in some cases) the institutional identity provider (IdP)

6. From perspective of the user (and the user’s institution) the institutional IdP is always the same but every publisher website has different look and feel (for login) some use the WAYF, some don’t not easy for the institution to provide ‘help’ documentation that covers all cases

7. From perspective of the publisher every user sees the same website but each user has different IdP (and possibly WAYF) not easy for the publisher to provide ‘help’ documentation that covers everyone

8. And… wider context need for global publishers to accommodate multiple‘academic’ federations need for publishers to handlenon-academic audiences (local usernames/passwords, pay-per-view, etc.) need for publishers to handle social media (Facebook, Google, Twitter, etc.)

9. 3 examples… of current practice

25. Some ongoing work… back in 2009, JISC commissioned a “Publisher Interface Study” by Rhys Smith at Cardiff improved WAYF embedded discovery module for Shibboleth (by Rod Widdowson, Steading System Software) KantaraUniversal Login Experience (ULX) Working Group Google

48. Conclusions usability across federated login is hard variety of practice by today’s publishers variety of exploratory work in progress need to use this to drive more consistency no longer just an ‘academic’ problem (c.f. Kantara and Google work) at Eduserv, we are watching this space