Epic: Magic login

[jamalv]

Context:

To optimize the potential for (viral) growth of the platform, it is essential to lower the barriers of entry and remove any friction we can. Identity management and user onboarding is very important in this.

Currently to get registered and login the user has to perform 15 steps:

1. Perform action that requires account, get redirected to login screen
2. Click “maak een account” on login screen
3. Fill username
4. Fill password
5. Fill emailadress
6. Agree to terms & conditions
7. Click “maak het account”
8. Go to mailbox and open email
9. Copy verification code
10. Go back to browser
11. Paste or enter code
12. Click confirm
13. Fill email adress (not username, which will be prefilled by browser)
14. Fill password
15. Click login

Proposal:

Using the “magic login” system used by forus we can reduce this to 4 or 5 steps:

1. Perform action that requires account, get redirected to login
2. Fill emailadress*
3. Click “send magic sign in link to xx@xx.com”
4. Go to mailbox and open email
5. Click link and get redirected and logged in to platform

*If user already signed by email, we can prefill the email adress, then this action is not required.

[jamalv]

Advantage from a security standpoint; we dont store any passwords. We use the protection of the mailbox. Since a lot of services offer “account recovery” trough email, this is common practice.

[maxvisser]

I think I saw something like this in the specs. Maybe research if Cognito even support something like this. I did a quick google search and clicked on this github issue: https://github.com/aws-amplify/amplify-js/issues/1896

It seems somewhat possible.

[jamalv]

Results from alpha test 2 and 3: current signup took 5m 54s and 6m 13s respectively.

[waydelyle]

I have a working solution https://github.com/aws-amplify/amplify-js/issues/1896#issuecomment-539452876