How Helpful is Colour-Cueing of PIN Entry?

TL;DR

This study empirically examined whether adding color cues to PIN entry pads improves users' ability to recall PINs, finding no significant benefit despite initial expectations.

Contribution

The paper provides empirical evidence that color cues do not enhance long-term PIN recall, challenging assumptions about implicit memory aids in secure authentication.

Findings

Color cues did not improve PIN recall over time.

PIN recall deteriorated regardless of cue type.

Color PINpads did not outperform grey PINpads in aiding memory.

Abstract

21st Century citizens are faced with the need to remember numbers of PINs (Personal Identification Numbers) in order to do their daily business, and they often have difficulties due to human memory limitations. One way of helping them could be by providing cues during the PIN entry process. The provision of cues that would only be helpful to the PIN owner is challenging because the cue should only make sense to the legitimate user, and not to a random observer. In this paper we report on an empirical study where we added colour to the PINpad to provide an implicit memory cue to PINpad users. We compared the impact of colour PINpads as opposed to grey ones. As expected, the ability to recall a PIN deteriorated significantly over time irrespective of the type of PINpad used. However, there was ultimately no improvement in the ability to recall PINs when using colour PINpads.