Smartphone authentication: User experience, expectation and satisfaction

Abstract

Context: Millions of smartphone users are using internet, storing important data, making transactions by their mobile phones. Smartphone authentication has become an unavoidable part of most of the people these days and numerous number of times users need to go through the authentication process to use their phones. In such a circumstance, users need a convenient authentication system to use their smartphones effectively with possible less amount of time spent and obviously with ensured security for protecting their important data and files. Goal: The aim of this thesis is to study the existing authentication methods in practice and their pros and cons from usability and security perspective, authentication methods under current research and what users prefer mostly and why they prefer it for their smartphone authentication. Method: A quantitative study was conducted by collecting 67 answers from smartphone users of the community of Lappeenranta University of Technology, Finland. 43% of them were employee and 57% of them were student. Results: Mostly preferred authentication method is fingerprint based authentication and least preferred is PIN based authentication and ‘no authentication’. In general, 69% answers were convenience related and 31% answers were security concerned from all the participants, regardless of which authentication method they prefer. Conclusion: Fingerprint, a biometric authentication process has the best impact in users’ preference, mainly because it saves time for authentication and users do not need to memorize any secret, though it has some limitations regarding usability and security. Again, pattern based authentication system earned most user satisfaction.