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Fixing the "yet another account" problem
I'm really digging Get Satisfaction and its API. The user interface is intuitive, and I love the dynamic topic suggestions and all of the little touches ("Give your discussion a great title" makes me eager to please the forum gods). Ultimately, I have a burning desire to integrate Get Satisfaction with our website for feedback (myvidoop.com).
Unfortunately, there's a problem. We don't want our users to go through yet another page of internet paperwork (and remembering another password!) just so they can get an answer to a question--even though the sign up process is very simple and even though it is a one time cost per user. If a user has a problem with our site, why should she have to submit it with a different account on a different site? What can we do to fix this admittedly hard problem?
Unfortunately, there's a problem. We don't want our users to go through yet another page of internet paperwork (and remembering another password!) just so they can get an answer to a question--even though the sign up process is very simple and even though it is a one time cost per user. If a user has a problem with our site, why should she have to submit it with a different account on a different site? What can we do to fix this admittedly hard problem?
I’m sad
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Inappropriate?Two options :)
1) we'll be supporting openid at some point. We've promised it for many many months now, but have repeatedly pushed it down the priority list. We've got several open design and dev issues that we have to solve before openid gets to be a reality :)
2) Use the API to create people's accounts for them. By default, we don't allow this, but I can flip a bit in our database to enable it on a per-application basis. You could then push user accounts to us (It's not publicly documented, but if you are interested I can walk you through the specifics). Those users would get a "Welcome to GetSatisfaction!" email and have a default password assigned to them. You would obviously have to do some work to inform your users that you are creating an account for them.
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I've also though about leveraging OpenID or OAuth to build an impromptu spec in which we could validate users against your own service without actually creating a full-fledged account inside getsatisfaction. That's a tougher nut to crack since the system assumes an email address has been provided in many places. Something to think about in the future though.
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Wow, you're fast! That was exactly the two solutions I was going to post separately. A bit more on this in a sec... -
Inappropriate?I like the "create account" option. That could work for us (though we'd like to get rid of their passwords altogether). If eventually we could pass in an OpenID instead of you generating a password, that would be near-ideal.
Also, is it just me or is there something funny about how OpenID would fit into all of this? "Have a problem" => "get pushed to satisfaction" => "get pushed to openid provider" => "Sign in" ... => "have a new problem."
I’m happy
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Inappropriate?that's why i think i prefer the oauth approach:
have a problem -> get passed to get satisfaction with auto-generated account -> report problem -> get problem solved. -
Inappropriate?The password thing probably isn't going to go away. In the OAuth scenario, the user's password and the welcome email are the users control in the system. No matter what your company does, the user still has ultimate control of their presence on getsatisfaction.2 Comments Add a comment
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When you support OpenID, why couldn't I autocreate an account with an OpenID instead of an email/password? The user is still in control then.
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You're right. I was mostly talking about the scenario where a company is sending their account info along, rather than through an openid login. I ordered my sentences wrong :)
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Inappropriate?Hey y'all,
Can you arrange it so that the account isn't created until they try to post to the Satisfaction thread for the company? It might be confusing if, when they register initially for whichever site that they get 2 emails.
Just a thought.
-Chris
I’m happy
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Inappropriate?I'm not sure if that is the right way to go about it. They wouldn't even know they have an account in the system if we don't send an email out when it gets created, and not sending them an email until they contribute wouldn't be responsible for the lurkers: They would have their account information on a service and would have no knowledge or control over it.
I would say if anything it would be appropriate for your service to not create an account on getsatisfaction until they click on a link to the community on getsatisfaction.
Check to see if they have their satisfaction account linked in your database, and if they don't send them to a page where you can explain the relationship between your service and ours before creating the account. Hopefully it would be just as easy as them clicking "OK, create my account on GetSatisfaction", and then you pass them through.1 Comment Add a comment
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I agree. I think as long as the user understands he is creating an account, he won't be confused.
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