The role of password verification at sign up

When one form field just isn’t enough

My world has been all about form design for the last few weeks.

So following up from my exciting exposés on affordances and signifiers (making a button look like a button) and what to do with Date of Birth capture (following user research evidence not OS patterns), I recently had to find an answer to the question — do we need two form fields to validate/verify password at sign up?

Do we need two form fields to verify password at sign up?

Because It Depends is the answer to every question, I always like to revisit what I think best practice is, so that I’m giving clients current, evidence-based advice, rather than making sh1t up.

What is this design pattern I’m talking about?

Password verification usually appears as two similar form fields together, as part of

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