[Sigia-l] should I violate a usability principle?

[tOM Trottier]

I have a solution which does not violate your usability rules.

Create a separate message for each day, eg,

45 days until you MUST have a user ID and password. Sign up now at ...
44 days until you MUST have a user ID and password. Sign up now at ...
43 days until you MUST have a user ID and password. Sign up now at ...
etc.

Delete the old messages each day, too!

This reduces the annoyance to 1 per day for users, and reminds them of the accelerating 
deadline.

tOM

On Friday, August 04, 2006 at 11:12,
Samantha Bailey <samantha at baileysorts.com> wrote:

> Hi,
> 
> Background:
> I'm working on a project where we're going to migrate our customer
> base from one kind of login (password only) to a more secure login
> (user ID & password). This change is being initiated due to internal
> security concerns *and* due to the requests of a minority of
> customers. We know from history and research that the change is
> going to be somewhat painful for customers regardless of how well we
> do our job (both in terms of communications & the quality of the new
> process).
> 
> Dilemma:
> We are planning to have a 45 day transition period where users will
> get a message when they login alerting them to the fact that we'll
> be making the change and encouraging them to sign up for a user ID
> and password then & there, but they'll also be able to ignore that
> and click through to the site. Here's where it gets
> tricky--customarily we *always* give the option not to see messages
> again to reduce annoyance. These kinds of messages have ranged from
> pop-up blocker alerts to special offers (we're a subscription
> service where different kinds of content are priced differently). We
> are thinking about *not* including the "don't show me this again"
> checkbox in this circumstance.
>
> Reasoning:
> The primary reason I'm thinking about not including the check box is
> that my knowledge of the customer base suggests that the vast
> majority will check "don't show me this" and click through without
> setting up user ID and password. That means that on the day we
> actually turn the system over so that all users are forced to create
> a user ID and password we'll have a huge number of people
> interacting with the system and calling in when they have problems
> (or just calling to complain). It seems possible that by showing the
> annoying popup we can nudge more people to create a user ID and
> password earlier and/or at least have it sink through that a change
> is coming.
> 
> What do you think? Is this kind of willful disregard for a standard
> usability principle pure evil, or do the ends justify the means?
> Whether you think it's good or bad, have you ever done it & what
> happened?

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