iPhone App: Best practice for sign in with password recovery?

Question

I'm in the process of wireframing an iPhone App for a big website with some functions that can only be used by signed in users (e.g. favorites, saved searched).

Many apps use the modal dialog to sign in and I think that works pretty fine (mainly because you don't leave the page you're on). But how do you handle password recovery? And how do you switch to the registration screen if you don't have an account yet?

Background: Most users will not need to register because the already have an account but I guess that many won't remember the password. To receive a new password you only need to enter your email address.

Thoughts? Nice examples? Best practice? Any input much appreciated!

Answer 1

IMHO, you don't have a lot of choices. All this functionality should be accessible from the same dialog/screen. I.e. that you shouldn't have a plain login dialog without any recovery or register function. The fact that the user name is not the users e-mail address complicates the whole thing. Now you should include "Forgot user name" as well :)

OK. In addition to the login information, which is the primary task for the dialog, you need to add three secondary features to the dialog/screen:
1) Forgot password?
2) Forgot user name?
3) Register as new user.

The first two might be combined to "Forgot user name or password?"

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Implementation/example

Depending on the preferred work flow, I suggest that you add a login screen at startup. Something similar to the ACM TechNews app:

And implement the following improwements.

• Remove the "Cancel" button.
• Add a "Forgot username/password" button.
• Add a "View as guest" or "No thanks, I'll register later" button.

The password recovery and registration form could be handled by an existing web page that is shown in a popup webkit window controlled by your app.