Increasing user verification to make data more credible
Intro
Overview
Polco, the US platform for boosting civic participation, had plenty of signups. The problem was getting people to verify their identity and address. End-users skipped or ignored the identity verification feature of Polco. To the clients, governmental organizations around the US, data from unverified users isn’t as reliable as data from verified users. To ensure the data and information collected from Polco users was credible, they hired me to redesign the verification part of their product.
Role & Responsibilities
As the senior product designer I was tasked to design a solution that would convince people to get verified right away as they sign up while collaborating with the engineering team. I tracked the success of this project by measuring the weekly number of verified users, for both existing and new users.
details
Project Challenge
Users were ‘pushed’ into Polco by their local governments as the only way to participate in decision-making (via surveys, for example). Since the Polco app was sort of thrust upon them, they weren’t aware of what the app exactly is and what the merits of verification were.
In order to get people to verify their identities and understand what Polco is, I knew we had to ditch the lengthy verification process that existed on a single page (with a lengthy mobile scroll 🙈).
User Research
I conducted an UX audit and user research (by way of interviews and card sorting) to identify the design problems and the main bottlenecks of the user verification flow. These were the most prominent issues discovered:
1. The verification feature was hidden. As a user, you needed to know about the feature in order to find it buried under Settings. Too many taps were needed to get to it. It wasn’t part of the sign-up flow.
2. The current feature was missing an explanation as to why one would want to get verified. The Polco team knew why users needed to get verified, but the users themselves had no clue. Classic example of the curse of knowledge.
3. There was no clarity regarding data security and anonymity. Users had major concerns about their data privacy that weren’t being addressed in the verification flow. Hence the avoidance.
Ideation & Iterations
All three issues were closely intertwined, so I decided to tackle them at the same time during the ideation phase.
Thanks to my user-centered design approach I iterated on the designs quickly and got feedback from users through a card-sorting task. This exercise revealed that, in order to make the verification feature prominent and discoverable, there were 2 ways we could go:
1. Make verification a main menu item
2. Make verification part of the sign-up flow
After testing both options the first option turned out to be suboptimal; it was too passive and there was no incentive for a user to expand the profile menu on mobile to even discover the verification feature.
The second option wasn’t ideal either, because making it part of the sign-up flow made the whole experience too long and was likely to cause a drop in sign-ups. On top of that this solution didn’t address the existing users.
Therefore, a third iteration was created based on the second option. I introduced the progressive disclosure concept to make the flow more succinct and approachable. Namely, once the users were done signing up, they were prompted to verify their account right there and then.
They could also skip it, but then would be shown a notification banner at an irregular frequency (2 days, then 5 days, etc.) to prevent banner blindness. The banner was rewritten to suit both new and existing users, to clearly outline the main benefits of verification, and to reassure users that they’d remain anonymous on the app.
Conclusion
Conclusion
My research showed that the people who are using the app are devoted to their communities and really wanted to help to improve them. Hence why they were on the app in the first place - answering surveys about the development of vacant lots is hardly anyone’s idea of ‘a fun way to spend time’. I anticipated that these altruistic people would give account verification a second chance (spoiler alert: many of them did).
By splitting the verification process into further three steps (no scroll tyvm). The progressive disclosure reduced the cognitive load significantly, and created clarity.
Each step didn’t just ask for the information, but it also told the user as to why we needed it. This automatically tackled the data protection and anonymity concerns that the users had. Since participation is enabled by promising complete anonymity, people needed to be reassured that by providing the app with their personal data wouldn't jeopardise that.
Content strategy was an important element here; I chose the exact words the users used in testing to engineer that 'Aha! moment', after which they’d feel it was a no-brainer to get verified to continue using Polco and to help their communities even more.
I also tailored the success message which showed the district of the user based on the zip code they entered. This offered immediate feedback to the users and started kindling a more personal relationship between the app and the user.
Key Takeaways
The weekly average of verifications increased by 250% in 3 months after launch. More credible data has meant more informed decision making for the clients of Polco.
GAllery
