Redesigning and Evaluating Interfaces for Two-Factor Authentication: Performance of Younger and Older Adults

The increasing use of the internet for various activities has led to a rise in cybersecurity threats, placing user accounts at greater risk of compromise. To mitigate this, two-factor authentication (2FA) schemes have been implemented across various online services as an additional security layer. However, previous research has shown that setting up two-factor authentication methods is not particularly usable, resulting in a significant number of user errors. These usability challenges undermine the security benefits of 2FA by discouraging users from adopting it or leading to poorly configured setups that frustrate users, ultimately causing them to opt out. Importantly, it is not known how these challenges may vary across age groups, with older users potentially facing greater difficulties in navigating setup processes. In this study, Google’s 2FA set-up interface is redesigned using both young and older users, with a particular focus on error reduction. The results show that the new interface resulted in notably less errors and higher system visibility when compared to the previous version across both sample groups. However, errors were still made, particularly among younger participants, who had a higher error rate than the older participants. On the other hand, the older participants took longer to complete the account setup than the younger participants. Our findings suggest that users’ mental models and their familiarity with specific authentication methods may play a role in the types and frequency of errors they make during the setup process.