Microsoft’s “Picture Password”: A Breath Of Fresh Air On The Lock Screen
1–10 of 46 posts
Re: Microsoft’s “Picture Password”: A Breath Of Fresh Air On The Lock Screen
#2Does anyone else think that this is just convoluted and confusing?
Re: Microsoft’s “Picture Password”: A Breath Of Fresh Air On The Lock Screen
#3I love it - does anyone know if there is an iOS app that has this functionality?
I read the title and instantly though how cool it would be to do exactly what the article described.
Re: Microsoft’s “Picture Password”: A Breath Of Fresh Air On The Lock Screen
#4Does anyone else think that this is just convoluted and confusing?
Yes.
Re: Microsoft’s “Picture Password”: A Breath Of Fresh Air On The Lock Screen
#5Does anyone else think that this is just convoluted and confusing?
Absolutely. Mostly the extra clicks though with the slide up. If we already have to swipe a pattern to unlock, make that picture show up as soon as you wake the phone.
Re: Microsoft’s “Picture Password”: A Breath Of Fresh Air On The Lock Screen
#6Could the smudge hack be fixed by using more than one picture/passwordswipe?
Re: Microsoft’s “Picture Password”: A Breath Of Fresh Air On The Lock Screen
#7I find it annoying that we're innovating different ways of doing the exact same thing: switching from completely locked to completely unlocked.
I want near-instant access to a notepad for jotting down thoughts. I want more locking for reading existing notes. Still more for accessing email. I want a strong lock protecting apps related to finances.
The simple lock (just to prevent pocket-dialing) should be like a slider. The intermediate lock could be this drag pattern thing (which is just a friendly version of the Android drag lock). The strong lock could be a coded sequence with buttons that change location.
Re: Microsoft’s “Picture Password”: A Breath Of Fresh Air On The Lock Screen
#8Does anyone else think that this is just convoluted and confusing?
Actually there's some solid research behind this. If I recall correctly, people naturally find it much easier to remember which parts of a picture to hit rather than remembering a password.
Unfortunately, I can't find the research and sample that I remember reading about a while back--Google is spammed with Windows 8 stuff when I search for it and I'm terminally lazy. However, I definitely recall reading about research in this vein.
Re: Microsoft’s “Picture Password”: A Breath Of Fresh Air On The Lock Screen
#9I think one way to mitigate the smudge factor is just to rotate the picture each time. I am willing to bet (despite being totally uninformed :)) that a person will remember where to touch on the picture rather than the screen, so rotating the picture will not make it much more difficult to enter the password.
Re: Microsoft’s “Picture Password”: A Breath Of Fresh Air On The Lock Screen
#10I think one way to mitigate the smudge factor is just to rotate the picture each time. I am willing to bet (despite being totally uninformed :)) that a person will remember where to touch on the picture rather than the screen, so rotating the picture will not make it much more difficult to enter the password.
From http://blogs.msdn.com/b/b8/archive/2011/12/19/optimizing-pic...
As several comments suggested, we also considered shrinking the size of the image and displaying it at random positions and slight rotations on the screen to minimize any risk from smudges. We knew from usability feedback that decreasing the size of the image both increased the difficulty of properly entering the gesture and made the login experience feel less immersive; however, if there were a significant improvement to security, we wanted to consider the costs and benefits. What we discovered was that while shifting the image could reduce the buildup of smudges in specific spots, there were even more prominent “clouds” of taps, lines and circles that were identical relative to each other. With this information, an attacker could easily figure out the gestures relative to each other. With that information, it was a simple exercise to move them around the picture until they appeared to coincide with significant elements of the picture. There wasn’t a noticeable improvement in security and we were able to measure significant degradations to the fast and fluid user experience. In reality, using smudges is very difficult.