Passkeys offer a more secure and convenient alternative to passwords, but account recovery remains an open usability problem.
We’re studying how people recover access to passkey-protected accounts. Platforms use a range of recovery methods, but there is limited empirical evidence comparing how usable those methods are in practice.
We’ll only email you when participation opens.
Passkeys replace passwords with cryptographic credentials stored on, or synchronized across, a user’s devices.
That model works well until the credential needed to access an account is no longer available.
At that point, the account has to fall back to some form of recovery. Different systems take different approaches, and each introduces its own usability and security trade-offs.
This study looks at how those approaches compare when people actually have to use them.
You’ll create a temporary account, register a passkey, complete a simulated account-recovery task, and answer a short set of questions about the experience.
The study should take about 10 minutes.
The account used during the study is temporary.
Operational account and recovery data will be deleted after your session. Only anonymized study data will be retained for analysis.
Passkey adoption has grown quickly, but recovery is still implemented differently across platforms.
The goal of this study is to compare those recovery approaches and measure how they differ in usability, completion, and perceived security.
Passkey Recovery is a senior research project in the Bachelor of Computer Information Systems program at Mount Royal University.
The study methodology, source code, and final results will be published when the project is complete.