A Case Study of Graphical Passwords in a Chinese University

Abstract

The strength and memorability of picture passwords, that corelate with user's visual behavior, not only diverse between their cognitive styles but also within the culture predispositions. As part of the works investigating this topic, this paper reports a case study investigating visual behavior of Chinese students (N=36) on establishing graphical password. To examine cognitive and visual behavior, we have provided our participants with two sets of images: the first set illustrated images highly related to their daily-life experiences (culture-internal), while the second set illustrated images presenting daily-life experiences in a different sociocultural context (culture-external). Our results have indicated that users spent more time exploring culture-internal, rather than culture-external photos before they made graphical password selection. Different content of our pictures also affected the percentage of password gestures chosen by participants with culture-external image type falling higher on hot-spots segments. Our study sustains previous findings that promote individual approach towards users' sociocultural experiences in the design of personalized graphical password schemes.