A talk I gave at the OpenID Technology Summit West on April 5, 2010

1. OpenID at Digg
Lessons learned so far
Bill Shupp
4/5/2010 - OpenID Technology Summit West

2. Lessons
• Motivation
• Implementation
• UI/UX

3. Motivation
(what’s taken us so long?)

4. Motivation
(what’s taken us so long?)
• Difficulty getting it prioritized over other
initiatives

5. Motivation
(what’s taken us so long?)
• Difficulty getting it prioritized over other
initiatives
• Initially, a negative perception of the
technology (“shitty” UX, security concerns,
no single sign out, dislike of auto-login)

6. Motivation
(what’s taken us so long?)
• Difficulty getting it prioritized over other
initiatives
• Initially, a negative perception of the
technology (“shitty” UX, security concerns,
no single sign out, dislike of auto-login)
• Easier sell now with FBC, RPX, and Twitter
proliferation

7. Implementation

8. Implementation
• Better libraries needed

9. Implementation
• Better libraries needed
• We need a clearer spec for vNext

10. Implementation
• Better libraries needed
• We need a clearer spec for vNext
• Better test tools (continuous integration)

11. UI/UX
• What providers (OpenID and otherwise)
do we feature? (user poll)

16. UI/UX
• Can we have streamlined registration
process? (amazon + nascar)

17. DIGG 3rd PARTY LOGIN FLOWS
Start Here
click 3rd party back to starting
button or enter Display errors Authorized? No page with cancel
openid message
Yes Yes
No
Server Side 3rd party
setup (discovery,
tokens, etc) via ajax Errors?
is this token/id User logged
attached to a user?
Yes in
go to 3rd party to
authorize (in No
Errors? No
popup if
available)
Yes user_id cookie?
Display errors Yes
in dialog
No
Present Digg Login,
Do they want to connect to
then connect Yes the account in user_id?
credentials afterwards
No
Ask for email
Did we get an
address in some No email?
kind of dialog
Yes
No
Register, send
to orientation
Get unique email
address?
Yes page

19. UI/UX
• Many different experiences (FBC, Sign in
with Twitter, OpenID UI extension), harder
for developers
• Need for UI libraries

20. Questions?
bill@shupp.org
bill@digg.com