Sign-in options - good practices
A bit of a rant to be honest, but as I’m currently once again moving from one android phone to the other, there’s a few things in terms of UX that I’d like to complain about from worst to best:
No data transfer at all
This is pretty much the default with most apps and if you have more than one instagram account like I do, you’ll hate signing into all of those accounts. I understand this behaviour for something like banking apps, but insta or any other non-sensitive app?
Copy part of the login credentials
I didn’t see this with any app, but how about just storing the user name in the cloud and when opening the app on the new device as for the passwort? Certainly an interesting option for sensitive apps
Copy data via export/import
K9 Mail is an example for this, still a bit annoying as you have to copy the file from one phone to the other, but certainly makes having multiple mail accounts with complicated setups more easy.
QR code to copy data
Now this is of course only an option if you still have the old device. I’ve seen a few apps that put my credentials and data into a QR code on the old device that I had to read with the new device and was all set up. Google Authenticator is the best example for this and it’s just brilliant. The learning app my kid uses for schools also has this feature, who would have thought?
Sync the data via the cloud
A few non-sensitive apps had this and I’m happy to have this feature with those apps but wouldn’t want it with my banking app. BBC Sounds, Strava or any other low-key app would benefit from this sort of UX behaviour.
Conclusio
The levels of user convenience vary a lot and tend to the bad end of none at all. But as we know, implementing a simple QR code with either the necessary data or just a reference to data on a server is very simple. I did this for Budgetfuchs a few years ago to allow users to sign-in from a mobile device more quickly and to invite others to use the app with them.