Why people hate online passwords

Over christmas, I was sat with my stepdad as he opened up his new Kindle and attempted to set it up (a whole other usability story!). As it asked for his Amazon password he exclaimed how he didn’t have a clue what it was but he’d find out. The next thing I know, he’s opening up a spreadsheet on his laptop full of all his passwords! There must have been 20-30 of them. He said it’s the only way he can keep track of them all.

I was at a focus group recently where discussion naturally lead onto the topic of passwords. Every single person described how frustrated they are with the increasing pressure to create ever complex passwords that they then don’t remember.

It’s clearly a heated topic amongst users but with security being a top concern for companies (and rightly so), it puts ux designers in an awkward catch 22 situation. Make the password too complex and you risk people making the very un-secure decision of writing the thing down. Perhaps even putting it on a post-it by their computer – yes this happens! 

Anyway, as it’s Friday, let’s take a funny look at how this feels from the user’s perspective. I suspect most of you have also experienced this, haven’t you? 

Why people hate passwords