Design Decisions: username vs. email address

Anthony — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 19:39:58 +0000

In order to allow Cubit users to save their projects we created a feature called “projects”. In order to save a project and retrieve it later, we asked folks to create an account. Creating an account wasn’t hard, it just required you to create a login ID, enter an e-mail address and pick a password. We didn’t think it was easy enough.

The thing we disliked most about creating an account was the ‘login ID’. I know I have too many login IDs or usernames to remember. I can’t always remember if my username is anthony123 or anthonyfromcubit. But I always remember my e-mail address. So, we switched all new accounts to require only email and password.

Using email address as username is nice because it’s one less thing to think about when creating an account. It’s pretty normal to enter an e-mail address for an account: for news from the company, or alerts about the account. Why not make it do double duty? So we did. Hope you like it.

Plannovation » Design

Design Decisions: username vs. email address