Pros / Cons displaying list of users at login page

Question

We seem to have a lot of clients asking us to change the login screen in this manner:

1. Display a list of all available users (thumbnail picture + name)
2. User selects a username from the list
3. A password prompt appears near the username
4. User enters password then presses enter

This sounds remarcably similar to the Windows XP login, which is probably where they got the ideea in the first place. There are only about 4 - 5 different users that can login at any given station, so implementing that list on one screen is feasable.

So I was wondering if there are any usability experts with some word on this method of login. As far as I can tell, MS droped this behaviour in Vista/Win7, didn't they?

Answer 1

The downside of this approach is that it exposes the list of valid usernames to anyone who can access the login page. And also, as you've hinted at, it isn't very scalable to a large number of users. However if you've got an internal application with only a small number of users then it probably is a usability improvement. Alternatively, you could just implement a "remember me" feature so that a user's name was remembered and they just need to enter a password when they return to the application.

Answer 2

From a security perspective, this sounds like a bad idea. Your username is one of the unique pieces of information that identify you. Granted, with such a small group, most people already know each other's username, but still, I would think at least 2 pieces of personal info (username, password) should be required to login.

Answer 3

Providing user names should not be a security issue, think of all the email sites (hotmail, gmail, yahoo) where the email address is the username.

As for usability this is far better then expecting a user to remember their login name especially for user who are infrequent or have a lot of different user accounts.

Please remember to advise users on how to pick a secure password, the weak/moderate/strong as you type color indication while setting the password is a great device for reminding users of the strength of their password.

Windows 7, while not part of a domain, still uses this approach.

While there are few enough users that they can all fit on a screen or a scrollable list this seems like a good idea. As you get more users you may want the option of select from the list or type user name here, style login.