In Context

Saul Hansell wrote this article today in the Bits blog a post that is mostly about Equifax’s Information Card. It was an okay article, but this quote caught my eye:

[Information Card] is far more complex, and thus harder to use, than Open ID, a standard that lets you use your name and password from one site, say Google, to sign onto another site, for example, Facebook.

Saul has this backwards. As any good technologist will tell you, it is extraordinarily complex to make things easy for the user. Would you like to drive a car or use a mobile phone that was easy for the engineers to design and develop? I don’t think so. The Information Card metaphor, while complex underneath the hood, is surprisingly simple for the user. The only “complexity” if you can call it that, is something different. It is this: the user who doesn’t have a selector must first download and install one. But that doesn’t mean it’s hard to use. Nobody says Skype is hard to use because you first have to install it.

Secondly, while current Information Card implementations use the WS-* protocols and format, the metaphor can be applied to other protocols such as OpenID and others. In fact, there is a slow march in the OpenID world towards improving the OpenID user experience by adding a card-like, visual, point-and-click (vs. typing http://…etc. strings). Preferably integrated with the browser. Ever the optimist, I think there is a possbility of the OpenID Foundation and the Information Card Foundation working together to define OpenID Information Cards that will bring the beautiful simplicity of a visual interface to today’s OpenID user experience.