1859700 - Too easy to scan the "download Firefox" QR code when pairing a Firefox Sync device

Status: RESOLVED MOVED

(Cloud Services :: Server: Firefox Accounts, enhancement)

Description

[AJ Jordan [:strugee] (he/they)]

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64; rv:109.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/118.0

Steps to reproduce:

1. On mobile (I'm using a Pixel Tablet), go to settings and tap "Sign in to sync"
2. Notice the purple "Ready to scan" button, but be an irresponsible user and don't read the instructions to go to https://firefox.com/pair
3. On your desktop, open about:preferences#sync
4. Scroll to the bottom, see "Connect another device", and click that assuming this is the way to pair a device (it does lead to firefox.com/pair!)
5. Notice the QR code on the page and don't even bother reading the rest of the text because hey, there's my QR code that I have to scan.

Actual results:

I'm taken to a Firefox Accounts signin page. This is extra confusing because signing into this page will NOT pair your device!

Expected results:

Firefox should have realized my mistake and told me that I didn't scan the correct QR code. Or even better, it wouldn't be possible to make this mistake in the first place.

Comment 1

[David Durst [:ddurst]]

Attachment: Screenshot 2023-11-08 at 17-25-37 Mozilla accounts Connect Firefox on another device.png

Comment 2

[David Durst [:ddurst]]

Interestingly, old bug 1657427 has a previous iteration of this that's more stepwise. This problem is also called out in bug 1831721.

A lot of this is just formatting and layout. A fast mitigation could be to lay things out horizontally and treat the actions as proper headers (if we don't want to return to stepwise approach). I attached a quick mock just because this confusion has come up a few times.

Comment 3

[vzare]

Thanks David, I will pass this on to our UX team!

Comment 4

[vzare]

Interestingly, going directly to https://accounts.firefox.com/pair/ takes the customer to a screen that doesn't include the download QR code, as we then assume that they are initiating this from an existing Firefox Mobile app. We configured it this way based on entry point. But I can see how some people might use the toolbar to open the pair flow instead of going directly to https://accounts.firefox.com/pair/

Comment 6

[Chris Peterson [:cpeterson]]

I think this bug will be addressed by the new device pairing workflow in https://mozilla-hub.atlassian.net/browse/FXA-9334.

Comment 8

[Wil Clouser [:clouserw]]

Attachment: Screenshot 2024-05-07 at 10.54.04 AM.png

comment 6 is correct. The plan is to add a screen that looks something like the attached.

That said, we don't need to have a separate bug here getting stale so I'm going to close this.