Nov 26 2009
Leah Culver wrote a pretty interesting blog post about combining the log in and sign up forms into one [ via ]. The concept is not a bad idea, but some of the comments are a tad egregious. It seems that many of the commenters are focusing purely on aesthetics and/or functionality rather than usability.
As I said, the idea behind combining the two form types is not bad. In fact, I'd love to see it implemented more. But the catch is that it is going to really depend on the demographic. Not every user is going to understand it. However, even just making assumptions about the demographic / audience is not enough. Usability testing would be absolutely critical for something like this because it breaks from convention. Granted, the solution Leah went with a solution not too different from what Amazon uses for logging in and signing up, which I think is a pretty decent solution. But of course, not every site is Amazon.
Final solution aside, ultimately it boils down to your users. And this is a perfect example of when and where usability testing can and should be used.