Encouraging Proactive Habits

 

Overview

Identity Guard is an industry-leading identity protection service protecting the data & privacy of individual customers and businesses. The service they provide is largely monitoring and reactive.

 

Challenge

There’s a numerous amount of knowledge the company has for best practices but it’s not utilized to motivate & help customers to change their behaviors. They want to encourage their customers to be more proactive in their own identity protection services.

My team’s challenge was to utilize Identity Guard’s knowledge & services to empower customers by actively taking control of their identity from any potential risks.

 

Role

Team: UX Researcher | Interaction Designer | UI Designer

Role: Lead UX Researcher

Scope: 2-week Sprint

Constraints: iOS Mobile App

 

Approach

Business Analysis*

Competitive & Comparative Analysis*

Heuristics Evaluation

Survey*

User Interviews*

Affinity Mapping

Site Maps

User Flows

Journey Map*

Service Blueprint

* Focused deliverables in case study

 

Results

Identity Guard requires their customers to take proactive measures in protecting their identity. Our team spotted an opportunity to improve and add to their customer support service by implementing an AI chatbot. The AI chatbot will provide users with knowledge articles, FAQs, and connect them with a live agent to better equip them with the information needed to safe keep their identity. By honing our focus on a robust support feature, this service is giving its customers the best chance to protect themselves before any threats begin to take shape.

 

A monitoring service with an emphasis on knowledge

To begin our research, I wanted to understand who our team is designing for by identifying their business operations.

Listed below is the full analysis I lead to help us understand Identity Guard and guide our decision-making.

I want to highlight 4 key sections that we agreed to focus on moving forward.

  • Identity Guard is aiming to reach both businesses (B2B) and individual consumers (B2C)

  • They’re looking to establish trust, customer service, and knowledge/informative relationships with their customers.

  • When it comes to value, they have an important partnership with IBM Watson that scans detections with quick 24/7 data breach notifications.

  • Lastly, they monitor customer information, send alerts, and assist in case of a breach.

Support identified as an area of improvement

Now how does Identity Guard stack up against its competitors?

  • Some of those listed include LifeLock, ID Watchdog, and Identity Force as well as a comparator in Chase

  • The only areas where Identity Guard didn’t compare to competitors were customer support and live chat

Customer Support

Identity Guard has customer support, however, after reading various professional & peer reviews, I later found frustration from customers with various pain points such as long wait times and limited hours.

Live Chat

A feature displayed and available among all competitors except for Identity Guard. The live chat feature allows you to communicate. with support agents in real-time without the wait or need for a phone call.

Identity protection is important for our users

12 survey respondents completed the survey that provided us insight into people’s behaviors regarding identity theft/protection. Here’s what they had to say:

Importance

The level of importance is high among 9 respondents toward identity protection

Non-Users

10 respondents who currently do not have identity protection services

Consideration

9 respondents consider signing up for a service

Our biggest challenge was finding users who currently use an identity protection service, particularly Identity Guard, to help understand the pain points and areas of improvement we can focus on. However, after reviewing our respondent’s results we determined both non-users and users of a current service have the same feelings toward identity protection: it is very important!

Out of the 12 respondents that completed our survey, 5 of them agreed to interviews. Listed below were the common themes from our users who both have identity protection services and those who do not.

  • Users communicated that they sometimes do not think about identity theft

  • Users emphasized the need to be alerted in the case of identity fraud, theft, concerns, etc.

  • The convenience of using a mobile device was a priority and a must for our users

“When you find out early enough you can stop it or work towards stopping it”
— Interviewee #2
“I don’t think of myself as a target for identity theft”
— Interviewee #3

The problem we’re faced with is that our users need guiding learning to be more proactive in protecting their identity so they can mitigate risks and feel more secure.

This means we’ve determined the basic features that are absolutely necessary to include if we want to resolve this problem

  • The ability to live chat with a support representative to answer your questions and concerns regarding any potential threat

  • Communicative alerts to users in case of a breach in order to both take action and learn to reduce their risks.

Support Service Could Use Improvements

 

Present Journey Map

Within our user’s journey of being alerted to a potential threat, they want to have it resolved by calling the support line to assist. However, due to long hold times they could not immediately resolve it on the spot resulting in a disappointing experience.

 

Future Journey Map

Our team saw this as our biggest opportunity. Specifically, we helped users respond to a potential threat by giving them additional options such as an AI chat-bot, help articles, and ultimately a live support agent if they cannot resolve this on their end.

Options Made Available In Any Situation

The journey map helped identify where users would go through in case of a potential risk but it didn’t answer how it would look if a situation like that plays out. This is where our story comes to life through visuals such as this storyboard. In the following scenario, our user is out with a friend and they receive a notification that required their immediate attention.

1. Our user is out with a friend when suddenly they hear a notification on their phone.

2. They see the alert regarding a potential password breach and hop onto the app immediately to find out more.

3. Our user sees what they can do to mitigate this risk. We’ll provide options such as FAQs, live chat, and calling a support agent.

4. They hopped on the phone after being readily informed through FAQs and feel relieved this issue is being taken care of as soon as possible.

Empowering Our Users For Answers

To emphasize, we are designing a mobile solution to ensure users have a chance to interact with both our live chat and in-app notifications. In the images listed below are different iterations of those screens going through the steps of mitigating potential risk.

Digitized Sketches

  • V.1 Alert Notification

  • V.1 Alert Handled

  • V.1 Initial Alert Tab

  • V.1 Options for Action

  • V.1 Help Articles

  • V.2 Help Articles

  • V.1 Call Support

  • V.1 FAQ Article

  • V.1 Live Chat

  • V.1 Survey

The resolution

  • Login page

    The home page welcoming the user to login in order to review their alerts

  • Breach alert

    After logging in to the alert page you have the option to take action on the alert or ignore

  • Address alert

    Following the happy path of this user flow, you’ll be taking action on the alert to better protect yourself

  • 1st option listing

    We’ll provide selections available for customers to take action by themselves or immediately seek help

  • 2nd option listing

    Since the password breach is a medium risk, our customer decides to learn more via our FAQ section

  • FAQ selection

    With selecting FAQs, you’re provided 3 curated articles to read related to the alert you’re looking to take action on

  • FAQ page

    Once you select the article that related most to the alert, you can begin to understand how you can better protect yourself

  • Live chat

    If the article does not provide enough information or if you do not understand the content, you have the option to receive further help from our live chat

  • Live chat

    Once in a live chat with an agent, you’ll have the name of the agent listed above along with two options; back to risk management or end the chat

  • Survey

    Once you have received your assistance with an agent and have ended the chat, you can leave them a review

  • Survey

    Simply add in what you thought about the conversation and if they assisted you & provide a star rating out of 5 stars

Our user’s need for a mobile solution with better support and notifications was met

With additional time, I’d look to do the following:

  • In this first round, I was unable to find any current or past Identity Guard customers to provide us with additional insight into how we can more effectively solve this problem

  • Conducting the following tests on our new solution: usability, tree, and card sorting tests to help determine the best flow

  • Train support staff on new procedures incorporating live chats into their workflow

  • Collaborate with programmers to determine the capabilities and limitations

All of these factors will surely alter how the new service looks, acts, and interacts as my team ideated toward the best solution for Identity Guard and its customers.