Which kind of user experiences are we already using in the context of digital identity?

Continuation from post SSI: Digital Identity User Experience

When we think about digital identity, we often imagine futuristic scenarios with blockchain wallets and cryptographic keys. But the truth is, we're already living in a world where digital identity patterns are deeply embedded in our daily interactions. Understanding these existing patterns is crucial for designing the next generation of identity experiences.

Current Digital Identity Patterns

Social Login

The most common pattern we encounter daily is social login, "Sign in with Google," "Continue with Facebook," or "Login with Apple." This pattern has become so ubiquitous that users expect it on almost every platform. It's convenient, but it also creates a dependency on these platforms and gives them enormous power over our digital identities.

Two-Factor Authentication (2FA)

We've all experienced the SMS code or authenticator app verification. This pattern has become standard for securing accounts, but it's often seen as a friction point in the user experience. Users understand the security benefit but find the extra step annoying.

Password Managers

Tools like 1Password, LastPass, and browser-based password managers have become essential for managing our digital identities. They solve the password problem but create new dependencies and potential points of failure.

Biometric Authentication

Fingerprint and face recognition on our phones have made authentication feel seamless. Users have grown accustomed to this pattern, but it raises questions about privacy and what happens when biometric data is compromised.

The UX Challenges We Face

Fragmentation

Users have to manage dozens of different accounts, each with its own login system, password requirements, and security measures. This creates cognitive load and security risks.

Trust and Transparency

Users often don't understand what data is being collected, how it's being used, or who has access to it. The lack of transparency creates a trust deficit.

Recovery and Portability

What happens when you lose access to your primary email? When you want to switch from one platform to another? Current systems make these transitions difficult and often result in data loss.

What Users Actually Want

Based on my research and user interviews, people want:

Simplicity: One identity that works everywhere, without having to remember multiple passwords or go through complex verification processes.

Control: While they do not directly ask for it, the ability to see what data is being shared, with whom, and the power to revoke access when needed should be a right, and it should be the means of sovereignty in the internet. We are delegating a lot in exchange for using a service. You do not give the keys to your doorman in exchange for cleaning the elevator every day. In the digital world we have shared almost all keys of our data doors to companies that offer us a service, many times a service that appears free, but it's not.

Portability: The freedom to move their identity and data from one platform to another without losing their digital history. A digital persona, a digital twin is something that has been minted since the existence of the internet. Identity clarification, validation till the existence of a higher level macro trace of our digital actions was taken at the moment we were born by our parents and if the country in which we live has a registry, you are signed there as a new human being, byproduct of your mother and father. After that you developed the trace of your public identity slowly, by institutions valid in a cultural area, or nation state that have the privilege or agreement to validate part of it. Sometimes those organizations are known enough in order to extend this validation out of the jurisdiction in which they are in, others don't and if you move out of your "valid" area, your identity carries nothing and you need to prove again in the required institutions in the new area that something you did in the past that was firstly validated, is again valid. Well, this may not be necessary from now on.

Security: Protection against breaches and unauthorized access, but without sacrificing usability. Seems simple but identity breaches are the most common source of fraud. Identity theft is common but digital identity theft is just the most common, and the problem used to be not the average user per se, but the entities holding large swaths of data from users, the honeypots are the entities. Of course it is way more lucrative and effective to access a lot of data from one unique breach than one data from one breach. Massive matters here, you can play around this massivity by targeting known security breaches in batch all at once, converting only 1% is enough and profitable when stealing from all the database from a big entity breach.

The Opportunity

The current patterns show us what users are already comfortable with, but they also reveal the limitations of centralized identity systems. As we design the next generation of digital identity experiences, we need to build on these familiar patterns while solving the fundamental problems of fragmentation, lack of control, and poor portability.

The goal isn't to reinvent the wheel, but to evolve these patterns into something that gives users true sovereignty over their digital identity while maintaining the convenience they've come to expect.

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Next in the series: How technology has made identity verification evolve during history?