Product Design Sprint, Feb 2022
Designing an app to keep vulnerable populations safe from financial scams
Role
Product designer in a team of 4
Skills
Interaction design
Product thinking
Product designer in a team of 4
Interaction design
Product thinking
A problem statement so broad is difficult to design for, so we created three high-level goals to guide us along the way. Achieving these means achieving our goal!
1. Make online security a priority for users
2. Educate users about safety measures
3. Alert users of suspicious messages
Something that’s crucial in my design process is to set up success metrics to be able to assess my work. For this project, our indicators of success would be:
A decrease in the amount of seniors falling privy to romance scams
An increase in the knowledge seniors have about internet scams
We then came up with the idea for a third-party automated security app, and brainstormed features that would meet our user needs and achieve our goals. We kept our users at the forefront of all our brainstorming: people in the 55-64 age range who are mostly single, and less tech-savvy.
How can we educate users about risks and preventative measures?
Keeping our users in mind, we didn’t want the app to become too complicated or difficult to navigate.
The next step in our process was to come up with each screen’s design in a low-fidelity format. It was at this time that we decided to make an app for iPads, because research suggests that most seniors use an iPad or tablet of some kind.
Once we had a low-fidelity design, we moved into high-fidelity prototyping. We established a design system including colours and typography, and began designing! I was responsible for the Resources section and parts of the Dashboard, and also designed the screens and overlays for the notifications.
Why blue?
Why a shield?
Design decision #1: Using a sidebar menu
Design decision #2: Having a separate tab for apps SimplySecure doesn’t have access to
As the primary designer working on interactions and prototyping, I ensured that transitions weren’t too jarring or unexpected. This was a priority because most seniors struggle with interactions that are multi-gesture or complicated motor-function wise.
Additionally, visual cues are crucial for older adults, so we made sure to incorporate those into the app. Some examples of these micro-animations and interactions are below!
View recent alerts and apps you’ve allowed access to
Easily disable access using the toggle feature
Get instant notifications for suspicious messages
Understand why messages are flagged
Share alerts with loved ones to notify them
Learn more about digital safety and how to protect yourself
Even though this was just a 24-hour sprint, I learned a lot from designing SimplySecure and working with my amazing team!
Since our target audience was seniors, we made sure that we were designing for accessibility. We ensured that our colours and logo met WCAG standards, and that our primary touch targets were large and easy to interact with using only simple gestures. Of course, there's always room for improvement and making this app more accessible is a great next step!
Since we did not have the bandwidth to conduct much user research during this 24-hour sprint, our design decisions were more driven by our knowledge of design principles and heuristics. We made sure to not reinvent the wheel when it came to familiar features like a sidebar, dashboard, or articles page.
This was my first time designing on an iPad instead of on desktop or mobile, and it was a great learning experience! It's important to understand the constraints of the device you're designing on, and how it's used by your target audience. For example, while a navigation bar on a desktop is likely to be at the top of a screen, iPad users usually stay closer to the middle of the device to avoid reaching too much, so we put our navigation bar on the left side.
Conduct usability testing with seniors: Since we were on a time crunch we couldn't conduct testing, but this would be an ideal way to see if the app is user-friendly and intuitive.
Design web/mobile versions of the app too: For seniors that don't have tablets or rely more on other devices, a next step could be creating the user interfaces for those devices.
