1Password success story, and a UI suggestion

stevenjklein

(Sorry for such a long post, but I hope you'll indulge me by reading the whole thing.)

I'm a full-time Mac consultant, with 29 years experience working with the Mac. Somewhat ironically, my wife is a technophobe who doesn't much like computers and doesn't use her Mac for much beyond email. She knew it was possible to check her bank balance online, but she she could never remember how to log in to her bank's website.

Every few days she'd ask me to check it for her, which I did.

Then I got smart. I installed 1Password 4 on her Mac, and set it up with just a single login — her bank. I taught her how to log in using 1Password mini (which took about 5 seconds), and now she logs in to her bank account all by herself! It makes her feel more empowered.

So thank you, AgileBits!

Now, here's my UI suggestion. It's great that you have a "favorites" option, but it would be even better if logins could be added directly to the 1Password mini menu, without having to select a submenu.

Right now her 1Password mini menu has only 3 items — the search field, Password Generator, and Logins. And Logins brings up a submenu with only a single item in it. Even if I made her bank a favorite, she would still have to use the submenu to get to it.

I realize you have to balance feature changes against added complexity, and perhaps her use is so atypical that many of your current users wouldn't find it useful.

I'm a 1Password power user; I store my s/w licenses, credit cards, identities, secure notes etc. in it. But I am not the average Mac user. (If all Mac users were like me, I wouldn't have any clients!)

Every app developer has to try and find the right balance between a large feature set and ease-of-use.

As a Mac consultant, I can tell you right now that I could probably get a lot more of my clients to buy 1Password if all it did was let them save logins to their most commonly used websites, and select those directly from the mini menu.

So perhaps my UI suggestion is turning into a product suggestion: 1Password Lite. No notes, identities, or software license tracking. A Lite version could support just logins, or just logins and credit cards. Yes, in theory these features are built-in to Mavericks, but 1Password mini with the go&fill feature is a lot easier to use. Even without a change in price, I could get a lot more of my clients to buy into a simpler version of 1Password.

Or perhaps you could have a preference setting for "simple interface," which would be the default setting, and hide much of the complexity & power that's available.

Perhaps these are all things you've considered, or things that aren't practical. I'm just "thinking out loud" here, and I hope you find this feedback useful.

Jasper

Hi @stevenjklein,

Thank you for the kind words, and your feedback! :)

I'm not aware of any plans to create a "1Password Lite" version or simplified interface setting, but I will certainly let our developers know that you're interested in this.

However, you may find 1Click Bookmarks helpful for this case. A 1Click Bookmark is a bookmark that can be saved in your browser (for example, in the Safari favorites bar) and when clicked will take you straight to a site and log you in. To create a 1Click Bookmark, open the main app and drag an item from the list into your browser's bookmarks menu or bookmarks bar. Then, when the bookmark is clicked it will automatically go and fill.

And of course, ⌘\ is also an easy way to fill a login if you're already on a page (no need to open 1Password mini).