Athens is a crappy experience for users

This afternoon I decided to join the JANET Access and Identity Management group.

I hit the join group button on the site and was then prompted to join the JANET community. Seeing that it supported UK Access Management Federation (UK AMF) sign in, I entered my university’s name and clicked continue.

I was then forwarded to a login screen on the OpenAthens site. I don’t think I have any OpenAthens credentials so I clicked “Alternative login” (but first I accidentally clicked “Forgotten password?” thanks to my haste and the tiny links).

Then I had to choose my institution (again???).

Then I was asked to click on a link to take me to my institution’s login page.

Then I was forwarded onto our current Athens sign-in endpoint where I authenticated with my University of Lincoln network credentials.

Finally I was returned to the JANET Community sign-up screen only to see that none of the form fields had been pre-filled because of course the UK AMF is anonymised.

What a waste of time and a terrible user experience.