Research Goal

Using our research tool PassBeat, we want to conduct a field study and collect data in order to answer the following question:

Are rhythm-based passwords easier to remember than conventional, text-based passwords?

As discussed in section Why rhythm-based authentication?, conventional text-based passwords have many flaws. In particular, secure text-based passwords are often difficult to remember and cumbersome to use on mobile devices.

Therefore, we propose another option: Rhythm-based authentication. However, to be a real alternative, rhythm-based password have to be user friendly. This includes, among other criteria, that they have to be easy to remember.

Research suggests, that rhythm-based passwords might be easier to remember as users are more likely to have an emotional connection to a music piece than to letters or numbers. Therefore, the goal of our study is to determine whether the possible emotional connection to music increases the retentiveness of rhythm-based passwords in comparison to text-based passwords.

Our Hypothesis:

The login-success-rate of participants using rhythm-based passwords will be higher than the login-success-rate of participants using text-based passwords of comparable security level.