The Proposed Product

To design an application that would eliminate the need for passwords or access cards to gain access to digital or physical sites.

Proving the Product

Survey

The aim of the survey was to:

Determine if a specific group of people have an appetite for an application like DigiPrint

Uncover existing opportunities within the industry of Password / Access management systems

To support the viability of DigiPrint as a potential answer to uncovered pain points

65% of those surveyed used 5 or more passwords to access digital sites, while 15% of those surveyed reported having more than 7 passwords.  83% of those surveyed had 4 or more physical keys to access physical sites.   91% of surveyors expressed frustration or anxiety with the number of passwords and keys they possessed. 

These supported  a need for an application that leverages the built-in security features of a smart phone to create a digital fingerprint which will allow users access to digital and physical sites without having to remember a passwords or carry access keys.

Personas

Using behavioral analysis methods, I listed the various relevant behaviors expected from a potential users and compared said behaviors to the likelihood (by percentage) our expected users would exhibit those behaviors.

With the results of my behavioral analysis I was able to uncover patterns in user behaviors that better inform the development of my target persona.

Storyboard

Once the person was established, it was time to demonstrate and explores the circumstance in which this proposed new product would be used by our persona.

Constructing the Product

With a strong understanding of who our user was and how our user would utilize this new application, it was time to start constructing the framework for the new product. 

Wireframing allowed me to visualize the categories and grouping I created within the sitemap which further allowed me to create the visual hierarchy for the respective pages of the new product.

By using the sitemap and wireframes as a framework for developing,  I was quickly able to start testing paper prototypes to further iterate the basis for this new product. 

Iterations

Quick testing of my paper prototype allowed to me uncover several opportunities for improvements that weren’t immediately obvious to me.  

Among the many takeaways, I realized that including “add location” under the “website” category and “add website” under the “location” category was confusing to users as it made them question whether they were following a correct mental map.  

These changes, along with other iterations were incorporated in a later iteration of the product.

The Final Product

What I Learned

As is always the case when building and iterating a product, testing and justifying design choices is paramount and there is no better way to test these choices than to have your target users actually do the testing.   What I hadn’t realized is how much more insightful responses became when I posed questions that detoured from the user’s mental flow.

Instead of only asking the questions that clearly lead a user down all the step of the mental map for a specific task e.g.: “add a website to your access”; I also posed questions like, “unlock you’re home’s front door” immediately following that question to purposely disrupt the user’s mental map and test how easily the user transitions.

Doing this allowed me to run the same test but add a level of pressure that strained the design and provided more revealing details about the user experience and interface.