New Approaches To Designing Log-In Forms
uxdesign.smashingmagazine.com
uxdesign.smashingmagazine.com
(edit) In a context of a system that allows anyone to register new account, which appears to be what the linked article focuses on.
Of course it depends on the context. On Hacker News all user names are visible anyway.
Tada! Instant email scraping tool.
It reminds me of the time when a former boss asked me to add authentication onto the company intranet. She wanted to know who is logging in and viewing private documents, but she didn't like typing in or remembering passwords so I could only ask users for their username and "trust" that they wouldn't type in someone else's username instead. For some (probably most) users, security isn't on the forefront of their mind, so they need to be reminded of it.
Your email is the weakest link in a lot of password-based schemes anyways, but this approach is less secure and a bit confusing.
I think it's interesting but in practice passwords are more secure and people are used to them.
Yes and no. Of course security is important, but no realistic system is ever known to be completely secure, so it's always a cost/benefit question.
If you take security far enough that your system ceases to be useful, then UX certainly won't matter, because you won't have any users.
More commonly, if you make security checks too disruptive, it can be counter-productive because users will start to circumvent the system. Consider all the stories you've heard of someone changing their "updated monthly" password by just adding the next number on the end, or writing the PIN for their credit card on a bit of paper they keep in their wallet, or having a note of their network password taped inside their desk draw. Or just be the guy at Microsoft who invented UAC in Vista. ;-)
In my view, security is just another part of the user experience. For one's bank, it's surely a large one. For most web services, though, it's pretty tiny. As a Quora user, I'm perfectly happy for them to increase usability substantially at the cost of a minor increase in risk.