‘Open Sesame!’ (‘Khul ja sim sim’)

The first concept of a password was introduced to us during our childhood. The story of Alibaba and the 40 thieves describes the magical words ”Open Sesame”  which have the potent power to open the mouth of a cave containing a hidden treasure. Centuries of time has passed, but we haven’t stopped the practice of using secret words to unlock things. These secret words are today called passwords. The use of passwords has become integral in the life of every human being.

A few months back, lost in deep thought and stuck in the middle of something, I could not recall my computer password. My manager spontaneously replied ‘I have seen your password and it's only 8 stars.” I immediately burst into laughing.

This incident throws some light on short term memory (working memory) that we have. Our short term memory allows us to only remember only 3 to 4 things at a time as described in the following article:

https://www.livescience.com/2493-mind-limit-4.html

We use our short term memory in day-to-day life for things like office credentials, private email credentials, primary bank account credentials, credit, debit pins, etc. However, we may not be able to remember our password if asked in suddenly in a different context. For example, you are taken into a discussion room and suddenly out of the blue instructed “Can you write the password used to unlock your laptop?” You will be surprised to see that you need to really stress and recall the password due to the different context that you are placed in. it is contextual dependent memory and muscle memory that perform certain task without conscious effort.

Forgot password

If the application is not of daily usage, users won’t recall the password. Instead, users tend to follow Forgot Password link. As we are cognitive misers, we are reluctant to give more stress to ourselves to recall certain things. Thanks to technology, we are able to change, update or reset the password effectively only if we remember all the questions that we set while creating the account such as:

1. What is the first and last name of your first boyfriend or girlfriend? Etc.,
2. What is the name of your first grade teacher?
3. What was the make of your first car?

Let me share an experience that happened to me twice or thrice. When I reset the password with so much of combinations and permutations such as special characters, alpha numeric, etc. After all the effort I put in constructing the password, the application displays the message You cannot use the same password that you have used in the last 3 months. Surprisingly, this process actually validates or helped me remember the last password. I left the reset password interaction flow abruptly, and having remembered the password, I logged in to the application successfully.

Conditioning and Association  

When we are put in the context of resetting the password, we totally focus our mind to reset the application and we happen to create the same password as you have created the last one.

Because when we are conditioned, probably our approach is the same when we create the password for the first time. This refers to "Pavlov's dog" classical conditioning.

Science to technology demonstrators

Technology companies are making the best use of this science to reduce cognitive load and thereby making the life of users simple and stress-free. Organizations are implementing many technologies such as biometric fingerprint scanning, eye iris recognition, and facial recognition to reduce the cognitive load.

Touch ID is Apple's biometric fingerprint authentication technology does minimize the cognitive load and can be used with password combination as well. Apple’s siri, Amazon’s Device - ECHO (Alexa), and Windows Cortana are intelligent personal assistants which behave like a human friend who will always be someone you always go to or like to be with.

Every application is trying to adopt the friend behaviour to be more friendly and in turn earn the friendship! Regular updates to such applications constantly bring new features to maintain and increase the rapport as a friend and in turn earn the friendship. Isn’t it similar to a friend who will always have something inspiring to listen to when you interact?