Frictionless Adoption: Anonymous Timers?

[nelsonic]

To _minimise adoption friction, when a person first arrives on the site/app we should allow them to try starting timer(s) _without registering or logging in. This means they are anonymous to us. 😮

To make this work we need to assign them a JWT they can use to interact with the app anonymously.
if they decide to register their email address (and thus keep their timer(s) securely saved) their timer(s) will be owned by the email address they register with.

further reading: http://www.forentrepreneurs.com/time-to-wow/

[nelsonic]

Steps:

1. The boot client, check for existing Token (person has previously used the app) > goto step 4
2. Person is _new_ so hit /anon route and get a Temporary JWT
3. /anon generates JWT with _random_ GUID as person's value.
4. (Person can) create timers

[nelsonic]

We are going to use localStorage on the client/browser to store the (session) token.
This means that the person using the timer(s) anonymously can return to their timer (after accidentally closing a browser window) but will not be able to see their timers if they clear history.

[nelsonic]

This is working. Need to put it in practice to iron out any kinks.

[iteles]

@nelsonic On a non-technical note, should we allow anonymous (unregistered people) to have more than one timer (i.e. stop a timer and start a second, third or fourth one, etc) before they have to register to save their timers?

[nelsonic]

That question should not be directed at "just" me...
I think the app should have basic functionality for people who chose not to register.
and then we can do something like:

which we are discussing in: #80

But letting anonymous people start multiple timers it really a question for discussion and deserves its own issue... @iteles want to open an issue dedicated to discussing it? 😉

[nelsonic]

@iteles what else do we need to do to close this? have you tried the latest alpha itteration which allows people to start/stop as many timers as they want and then transfer these timers to their account once they register...? what else...?

[iteles]

Anonymous timers work 👍

We just need to test #91 and we can wrap on iteration 1 of anonymous people functionality I reckon.