Identity Guard

Creating a new service to improve customer support and encourage users to be more proactive.

Project Summary

Identity Guard is an identity protection service that leverages its partnership with IBM Watson® Artificial Intelligence to monitor users information and alert users to potential fraud.

Working with two other designers, I researched and designed a new service to provide better customer support and encourage users to be more proactive in protecting their identities.

Team: 3 Designers

Time: 2 1/2 Weeks

My Role: Service Designer

I helped with business research, data synthesis and analysis, and generating interview and survey questions. I also contributed heavily in sketching, wire-framing, and prototyping, and I created the journey maps and service blueprint.

Tools Used: Figma, FigJam, Slack, Google Suite, Pen & Paper

Learning the Business

First we **analyzed** Identity Guard to **identify business needs** and **assess** their **current value**.
I looked into the **Key Partners**, **Activities**, and **Resources** to determine the **existing framework** we could design from.
We discovered Identity Guard was **lacking** a **live-chat** feature, found commonly amongst competitors.
The stakeholders wanted to **encourage** current customers to be more **proactive** in protecting their identity.

Learning the Users

I
assisted in creating **interview** and **survey questions** which helped **recruit** potential users gather **vital information**.

Unfortunately, we were unable to recruit any Identity Guard customers.
While **83%** of our respondents **had no protection** at all, **75% felt** that **identity protection was very important** and **would consider signing up for a service**.
Through user interviews, we learned that respondents **valued** high **quality** **customer support** that is **easily accessible**.

Defining Our User

We leaned on our research findings and business goals to develop a representative of the **target user group**, Kirsten.

We used Kirsten to help **define the problem** so we could begin working towards a **solution**.
We needed to **develop a service** that **provides** Kirsten better **customer support** and **encourages** her **to learn** more about best security practices.

The User’s Journey

I broke down the user’s current journey, step-by-step.
I hoped to highlight opportunities where we could most **significantly improve** the user’s **overall experience**.

I discovered 2 **key opportunities**: when users are seeking help **handling a threat**, and after a threat is resolved, while the users are just **waiting for the next alert**.
We decided our service would best solve the customer and business needs in the form of an **intelligent virtual assistant**.

To illustrate how our we could **improve the user’s experience**, I repeated the exercise.
This time I included our proposed solution, an intelligent virtual assistant named **Surelock**.

By **responding immediately** to users and **providing ongoing support**, Surelock turns those points of frustration into positive interactions.
Now, users will end interactions feeling **more secure** and **better supported**.

Incorporating Surelock

Finally, I created a diagram mapping out our new service and how it could interact with the existing business to drive the user’s experience.

As Surelock would provide direct support to users, it would also improve support for others.

As Surelock handles the more common, less complex user issues, it reduces the strain on our live agents.

This would allow better, more responsive live support for more complex issues requiring specialized help.

Working in conjunction with IBM Watson® and Identity Guards support staff, Surelock would continuously improve and promote best practices.

Key Features

Bottom Navigation Improvement

Retains similar styled controls to make it easier for existing users to adapt to our new service. The center button offers users access to live-chat, a direct line to live customer support, and our new intelligent virtual assistant Sherlock from anywhere within the app.
Live Chat

One of the missing features revealed by the Competitive and Comparative Analysis, live chat offers one more level of support before users call in to get help over the phone.
Sherlock: an Intelligent Virtual Assistant

Sherlock guides and supports users as they deal with any threats they encounter. Additionally, Sherlock provides users assistance finding any information they might need within Identity Guard. As Sherlock offers support it guides users to be more proactive through subtle suggestion, like more prominent buttons size and placement, without being obtrusive.
Updated Alert Banners

By changing the styling of the alert banner we created an opportunity to provide a little more information to the user as they handled threats with the app. The banner changes color and icon to indicate to the user that action is being taken by Identity Guard. This should put users’ minds at ease and provide clarity as they move on to the next steps of handling the threat.
Handling a Threat

Sherlock offers cascading options to users as they handle a potential threat. Subtly herding users to help themselves if they can, Sherlock provides support to users and reduces the strain on live support staff by handling the simple and more common issues.
Feedback

As long as the concerns are responded to, our service presents one final opportunity to improve customer support by offering users another place to voice concerns or suggestions about their service.

The Prototype

Please enjoy this short walk through of the newly designed mobile experience, made possible by our new intelligent virtual assistant Sherlock. If you would like to check it out for yourself just follow the link below.

Try it Out!

Next Steps

As we continue to develop this project, we would look into getting more detailed and relevant research. In this first round we were unable to find any current or past Identity Guard customers to provide us additional insight into how we can more effectively solve this problem.

We would want to start conducting the following tests on our new solution: usability, tree, and card sorting tests to help determine the best flow.

We would need to create training material for support staff on new procedures incorporating Surelock into their workflow.

We would need to talk to programmers to determine the capabilities and limitations of our new Intelligent assistant.

And last but not least we would want to get a backstage look at Identity guard to understand what proactive measures users can take, what the system is actually doing behind the scenes, how our current staff interacts with that system, and if there are other/additional problems we can solve through the implementation of Surelock.

All of these factors will surely alter how Surelock looks, acts, and interacts as we continue to ideate towards the best solution.