FIDO Alliance Publishes Research-backed Guidelines for Optimizing User Sign-in Experience with Passkeys

LAS VEGAS, May 31, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- The FIDO Alliance today released new user experience (UX) guidelines to help accelerate deployment and adoption of passkeys.

The FIDO Alliance UX Guidelines for Passkey Creation and Sign-ins aim to help online service providers design a better, more consistent user experience when signing in with passkeys. The guidelines are available at https://fidoalliance.org/ux-guidelines/.

Based on FIDO standards, passkeys are a replacement for passwords that provide faster, easier, and more secure sign-ins to websites and apps across a user's devices. While far easier and more secure than passwords and legacy forms of 2FA, the research performed for these guidelines found that passkey sign-ins present a distinct user journey that service providers need to consider before providing passkey support. The FIDO Alliance UX Guidelines provide evidence-based best practices for key steps in the user journey for passkey creation and sign-in.

"As companies around the world accelerate their move toward passwordless authentication based on FIDO standards, the topic of user experience has risen to the forefront," said Andrew Shikiar, executive director and CMO of the FIDO Alliance. "Passkeys uniquely can provide a phishing-resistant sign-in as well as a superior user experience which can drive top-line growth by enabling more seamless access to online services and engendering stronger brand affinity. We encourage online service providers to use these guidelines in their journey to rolling out passkeys to ensure a consistent, thoughtful, and simple user experience for their users."

Passkeys are supported in the vast majority of consumer devices: Apple and Google have readied their operating systems for service providers to enable sign-ins with passkeys that sync across devices; Windows 10 and 11 have long supported device-bound passkeys in Windows Hello – and passkeys from iOS or Android devices can also be used to sign into sites in Chrome or Edge on Windows.

Many leading service providers including Google, PayPal, Yahoo! Japan, NTT DOCOMO, CVS Health, Shopify, Hyatt, Instacart, Robinhood, Mercari and Kayak are providing their customers with passkey sign-ins.

"When it comes to providing passkeys to consumers, technical implementation is only one piece of the puzzle," said Kevin Goldman, chair of the FIDO Alliance UX Working Group and Chief Experience Officer at Trusona. "Simply put, the UX is a critical component in helping consumers adopt passkeys as a password replacement. These guidelines are a carefully researched set of best practices that will help online service providers design a better, more consistent user experience when signing in with passkeys and ultimately maximize adoption."

The guidelines were created by the FIDO Alliance UX Working Group in partnership with usability research firm Blink UX - with added underwriting support from 1Password, Google, Trusona and US Bank. This group collectively conducted formal research of FIDO user journeys and actively engaged with FIDO Alliance stakeholders to establish these UX best practices.

Learn more about the FIDO UX Guidelines for Passkeys at Identiverse 2023

Attending Identiverse? Learn more about the guidelines today, May 31, during the session "Optimizing UX for Passkeys" at 2:00 pm PDT.

Attend the Webinar Series

The FIDO Alliance is hosting a three-part webinar series to educate on the findings and best practices developed through the intensive research for the UX guidelines for passkeys. Attendees will get actionable tools to accelerate and optimize deployments of passkeys for consumer sign-ins.

Webinars include:

• 10 UX Guidelines for Passkeys (June 13, 2023 at 10am PDT / 1pm EDT)
• Driving Adoption of Passkeys with UX (June 20, 2023 at 10am PDT / 1pm EDT)
• UX and Content Strategy Workshop for Passkeys (June 27, 2023 at 10am PDT / 1pm EDT)

Register for the webinar series here.

About the FIDO UX Working Group

In order to accelerate adoption of FIDO solutions and achieve the FIDO Alliance's vision of helping reduce the world's overreliance on passwords, the UX Working Group (UXWG) serves as subject matter experts and internal advisors within the FIDO Alliance on issues related to usability and UX. The FIDO Alliance UXWG is composed of 79 product, design, accessibility, marketing and technical leaders from 31 diverse companies. A full list of members who contributed to this project can be found in the guidelines.

About the FIDO Alliance

The FIDO (Fast IDentity Online) Alliance, www.fidoalliance.org, was formed in July 2012 to address the lack of interoperability among strong authentication technologies, and remedy the problems users face with creating and remembering multiple usernames and passwords. The FIDO Alliance is changing the nature of authentication with standards for simpler, stronger authentication that define an open, scalable, interoperable set of mechanisms that reduce reliance on passwords. FIDO Authentication is stronger, private, and easier to use when authenticating to online services.

Contact
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SOURCE FIDO Alliance, Inc.