[Sigia-l] defining acct. profile

[Beau Lebens]

Hi Jody,
Personally, I'd probably take a similar approach to other services out
there, and offer both options.

You have already specified that you have a wide range of skills, and as an
advanced user, I would be quite annoyed (and probably wouldn't bother)
having to go, sign in, go to my preferences page, then locate the threaded
discussion (again) and subscribe to it.

I think I'd look at doing something like this;

 1. The user can log in "off their own back" whenever they want.

 2. When logging in, they can (optionally) tick a box to have their
    username remembered, but they'd still need to re-enter their
    password to get to 'secure' areas (avoids accidents)

 3. Have the subscription management options available via their
    normal account preferences/options area

 4. Also have options within the actual discussions for signing up
    to a discussion

 5. If the user tries to sign up and they don't have an active session,
    then they are asked to log in, then the subscription goes to their
    account. If they are already logged in, then just add it to that
    account.

 6. Unless told otherwise (via the tick box), I'd use a temporary
    cookie to manage the sessions, which expires in perhaps 30 mins?
    You'd have to make an informed decision on the length of this
    session based on the material/method of info access.

 6a.You could also consider using a temporary cookie that died when
    the user closed their browser, thus effectively logging them out.

This means that novices can go into their account details and work on their
subscriptions, pro users can quickly and easily do it directly from the
actual discussion (you should also provide an unsubscribe option if it is
detected that they are already subscribed), and hopefully all your
authentication issues would be sorted out, because from one user to the next
you are effectively logging the other user out automatically, one way or the
other.

Hope that makes sense, just my 0.02c :)

Beau

//  -----Original Message-----
//  From: sigia-l-admin at asis.org [mailto:sigia-l-admin at asis.org]On Behalf Of
//  Jody Hankinson
//  Sent: Friday, 11 April 2003 5:23 AM
//  To: Listera
//  Cc: sigia-l at asis.org
//  Subject: Re: [Sigia-l] defining acct. profile
//
//
//  Recap:
//
//  Project: extranet with 10,000 users, wide skill range, wide technology
//  including shared computers.
//
//  - In June, new functionality will include unique user ID and threaded
//  discussions
//  - If user can subscribe to threads, where does that user manage those
//  subscriptions?
//  a) account profile (that requires user validation)
//  b) threaded area (no user validation)
//  c) other
//  - Testing is not an option
//
//  My concern is that novice users on shared machines will change
//  each others
//  settings causing maddness. Tech/customer support budget is limited. I
//  think the subscriptions should live in the accout area with
//  links from the
//  threaded discussions. The technologist, who thinks of himself as an IA,
//  thinks users will not make subscription changes if they have to
//  validate.
//
//  My solution: be conservative, do it my way to start, test as
//  soon as money
//  and time are available.
//
//  The tech solution: no user validation to make any account or
//  subscription
//  changes and if someone complains, change it later.
//
//  My question to the group: Now what? I think the alternate
//  solution is bad.
//  I am willing to concede I may have lost perspective, but with this user
//  base I would hate to have some account confusion and loose them entirely
//  than an extra step.
//
//
//
//  Jody A. Hankinson
//    Information Architect........| Translating strategy and processes
//  hank99 at bway.net                | into digital experiences.
//  917.749.0910
//  ------------
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