On Multiple Password Interference of Touch Screen Patterns and Text Passwords

The memorability of multiple passwords is an important topic for user authentication systems. With the advent of Android unlock pattern mechanism, research studies started investigating its usability and security features. This paper presents a study of recalling multiple passwords between text passwords and touch screen unlock patterns, as well as exploring whether users have difficulty in remembering those patterns after a period of time. In our study, participants create unlock patterns for various account scenarios. Our results reveal that participants in the unlock pattern condition with three accounts can outperform those in the text password condition (i.e., achieve higher success rates), not only in a one-hour session (short-term), but also after two weeks (long-term). However, there was no statistically significant difference between participants in the text password and unlock pattern condition in the long-term, when dealing with six accounts.