Note: I'm wondering whether we can consider a more prominent design for this notification, perhaps something that appears next to the email field once one is entered, as opposed to gray text underneath it.

Change 493142 had a related patch set uploaded (by Catrope; owner: Catrope):
[mediawiki/extensions/GrowthExperiments@master] Account creation: display message when user focuses email field

https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/493142

The attached patch implements this with a yellow warning box that slides out from the email field when the user enters the field, as requested on T216087. However, when I tested it, my browser's prepopulation suggestion thing obscured it, so we may want to display it at a different time.

This looks off in Firefox 67.

I left some feedback in gerrit. Overall, I wish we were handling this in a different way (Echo notification, or popup on page load immediately after account creation). Alternatively I think we should consider having the "you have a verification email coming" text be static on the page rather than trying to introduce it after the user begins typing.

Right... Sorry I missed that.

@kostajh -- can you say more about your misgivings here? About why the message should be static, and why it would be better as a popup after account creation (and how that would interact with the welcome survey)?

(I still would like to try this current feature out in beta).

About why the message should be static, and why it would be better as a popup after account creation (and how that would interact with the welcome survey)?

1. As Roan noted, "my browser's prepopulation suggestion thing obscured it, so we may want to display it at a different time."
2. it's weird to receive the feedback on focus before one has entered anything
3. The styling shows the feedback as a warning, which implies that something is problematic with the user input
4. it's also odd to get the feedback before one has entered a complete, valid email address. You can enter an invalid email address still be informed that you'll get a verification email (until you try to submit the form, at which point you'll be asked to correct it)

I think a prominent message immediately after form submission would be preferable for getting the users attention. It could be a standalone page that we redirect to, like Special:ConfirmYourEmailMessage, with a button to advance to the page you were supposed to go back to (WelcomeSurvey, or whatever page you were editing), or even automatically do so after 5 seconds. Or it could be a modal that informs the user we've sent the email.

As I understand it, it's pretty common on other sites -- see one example below, which appears immediately after you've registered.

Seems OK, just wanted to note that this UX exists if you enter an invalid email and press "create account".

Change 493142 merged by jenkins-bot:
[mediawiki/extensions/GrowthExperiments@master] Account creation: display message when user focuses email field

https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/493142

@kostajh -- thanks for writing out your thoughts. Some of these considerations go beyond my design capabilities, and so we'll need to ask @Cntlsn about them. But one thing that I think limits us is that we don't currently plan to A/B test the changes we make, which makes me think we should refrain from doing the kinds of changes that might have unexpected effects on account creation. In other words, the idea about redirecting to a page about email confirmation might substantially increase abandons -- more than the currently-designed yellow warning box. But we're not planning on investing in an A/B test to find that out. So with the amount of investment we're willing to put in, I think it is wiser to stick to more predictable changes.

That said, I think @Cntlsn should take a look at this at some point in the next couple weeks, since deploying it isn't urgent. I'll move it to the "Needs Design" column. If @Cntlsn thinks we should do something different, we can decide if it's worth the risk, or whether we should instrument.

(and noting that there still hasn't been any code written on the mobile version)

Our team has decided that we will not be working on this project during Q4. Moving it to the next fiscal year.

See also T284166: Emit a notification when the user has a nonexistent email address when a user (particularly a newcomer) enter a wrong email address (often with a typo) such that the notification email get bounced: in this case we can warn the user.

If the email address do exist but belongs to someone else, we cannot do anything except notice the user s/he has received an email confirmation as described in this task.