May 16
Improving Digital Signature Management with Ux Design
Using the user experience to propose an easy and practical way to organize digital signatures.
To read the Portuguese version: Melhorando o gerenciamento de assinaturas digitais com Ux Design | by Leticia Ferreira | Medium
Summary
What will you find here:
- UX Strategy: creating the project, knowing the market and comparing competitors
- UX Research: Persona creation, desk research, benchmarking, user journey and qualitative and quantitative research
- UI Design: Wireframes, design systems and final prototyping of a mobile application
The challenge
Use Ux Design to improve the experience of managing digital signatures
My role in this challenge was to use all the tools that ux design offers to find an improvement in the aforementioned process. I used product strategy, research, testing, UI, writing and other ux tools to complete this case.
The scenario
With desk research, it is possible to see that the number of users using digital signatures only grows in Brazil and in the world. The internet has changed consumer behavior and made subscriptions become something recurring in the lives of many people, for example, it is easy to see this growth in numbers looking at the case of Netflix. Streaming had about 36 million subscribers in Latin America in 2021, this number is expected to exceed 47 million in the next four years.
The number of users who have digital subscriptions has increased a lot in recent years, where more than half of users have 6 to 10 subscribed services. In addition, more than half of users spend more than BRL 100.00 per month, the percentage of the public that spends more than BRL 300 on subscriptions and monthly fees (34%) is 2.8 times greater than that of the public that spends up to BRL $50.
Another interesting and essential piece of information for the project is that most people who pay for digital services and products do not know exactly how much they spend per month with subscriptions.
Given this, it is clear that the service modality is here to stay and has already conquered the lifestyle of many users. Within this vision, the most used types of subscriptions are: consumer and telecommunications accounts, movies, series and videos and music platforms. Health, education and well-being (gym and leisure) also represent a significant number of users. In Brazil, the region that most consumes these services is the Southeast, followed by the South and Midwest.
Desk research data for this case was primarily taken from Vindi’s market research.
Project’s goal
With the understanding of the current scenario and since Brazilians use the service modality a lot with the view that there is an opportunity for improvement in the management of subscriptions, the project objectives were established:
Seeking to better understand the objective and strategy, a “Five W’s and 1 H” of the project was also created:
- Why? For users to have greater control over their subscriptions as the modality only tends to grow
- Who? People who use more than one digital signature
- When? The app comes in when the user feels they need help managing subscriptions
- What? An app that links price, status, time and plan options to the user’s subscription
- Where? in an app
- How? Metrics at first: SUS, DAU/WAU/MAU and CSAT
With the objectives defined, a baseline was defined for the follow-up of the project and thus it became clearer to understand where the user enters. To better exemplify, a Job Story was created:
“When I subscribe to different digital platforms, I want to have control and a practical view of them, so I can have greater financial control of my expenses.”
Personas
The creation of personas took place in two moments: the first to define a possible user and create hypotheses about their pain and the second already validated by the research.
Storytelling
One of the best ways to understand the user and deliver improvements is from their story and, for that, a storytelling was created from the Pixar Framework telling the story of the project persona.
Once upon a time there was André, 28 years old, Project Manager at a digital bank that lives in Belo Horizonte. André is passionate about video games, wines and his dog, Alê. André loves to spend his free time enjoying these hobbies.
Every day after work, she usually goes out for a walk with her dog, ordering food and opening a wine to enjoy with the order. He uses the digital medium a lot for this: ordering food through apps, playing on a streaming platform and listening to podcasts online while walking his pet.
One day, after learning about a new streaming service for movies and series, André decided to buy another subscription. However, André was also worried because he didn’t know if it would be worth subscribing to another service since he didn’t even remember how much he was paying for a similar service since the last price adjustment.
Because of this, he did a research comparing the plans and prices of streaming services, in the middle of his searches he found a subscription management application where it is possible to have a clear view of what services the user has already subscribed to, the price, plan , validity and other information.
Until finally, André installed the application and synchronized it with all his accounts and subscriptions, with this he was able to understand everything that was already signed and included in the plans, how much he spent on subscriptions and was able to decide his next subscriptions with much more ease.
Benchmarking
Thinking about the existing alternatives, a lack of competitors for the service modality was observed. Only one application that fits the project category and that works in Brazil was found:
In the benchmarking analysis, in addition to perceiving a good business opportunity, other ways of improving the product were found, such as:
- Provide the user with a view of the subscribed plan and others available
- Offer a view of how long he has been subscribing to the service
- Enable the creation of different profiles within an account since, even within the same house and/or family, each one can have different services subscribed to
- Offer a view of the subscription status so that, in addition to making it easier for the user to choose whether or not to maintain a service, the user has control of the free trial periods, without missing the deadline and having to pay something
Validation and research
After creating the André persona, the time has come to understand and validate important points about the user in order to offer them solutions and improvements. Thus, a CSD matrix was created to better facilitate the production process of quantitative research:
The survey was applied to potential users in order to validate or not the hypotheses and gather more data on the profile of possible users. For this, a questionnaire was organized via google forms that was made available in whatsapp, telegram and facebook groups.
The search yielded the following results:
- Most users have more than one subscribed service.
- No user maintains any form of organization of subscriptions.
- Knowing how much is being spent on subscriptions is the user’s greatest desire, in addition, general information about the subscription is a common desire. Knowing how long the service is subscribed to was not included in the answers
- Most users do not know exactly how much they spend on subscriptions, a considerable part have an idea of the value and a minority know the exact value
- Most users do not miss the free trial period of subscriptions, but still, a considerable portion suffer from this problem.
User Journey
From the validations, the user journey was created, mapping the steps of the process between subscribing to a service and managing it with ease. User journey mapping helps you understand opportunities for improvement in the process that the user takes to complete an action.
Scribbleframes and Wireframe
After the solutions were already defined, the prototyping process began. First, sketches were created for the future application, following the concepts of pencil before pixels. To facilitate a better view of the sketches, the drawings were first passed to Figma in a very simplified way, thus creating the Wireframe of the application:
After that, a low-fidelity prototype was generated to analyze the passage of each screen. The prototype underwent navigation tests with potential users, during the testing, questions were asked about navigation and suggestions.
It was informed that the available flow made the experience intuitive and straightforward, being objective in the result that the user sought to find. A caveat that appeared during the test was the filter button, which became a bit confusing at first since all the options were already available on the screen.
According to this feedback, new screens were implemented in the creation of the high-fidelity prototype.
High fidelity prototype
After evaluating the results of the tests applied, the style guide was created to consolidate the look of the application:
Based on the wireframes and style guide created for the application, the high-fidelity prototype was built.
Click here to see and test the prototype
Project Solution
Using API integration will help the user to sync their accounts with the management application, thus, the process is much faster and more convenient.
Advantages of API Integration
There are numerous advantages of working with API integration, many companies make their APIs available for other users and businesses to develop innovative solutions with them.
According to ID Blog, “the API allows for a more agile integration of systems that are incompatible, without having to allocate a team of developers to the process. In addition to faster information exchange, there is a saving in time, amount of financial resources and data used in the work.”
Final considerations
It is with great pride that I finish this case and arrive at the result of the process successfully. It was a challenging project but one that brought countless learnings and a lot of practical knowledge.
Here is a special thanks to Leandro Rezende and the entire team at Ux Unicórnio, for their guidance and knowledge. The course certainly brought a lot of baggage and, mainly, brought the exercise of curiosity to arrive at better solutions. I also thank Bruna Castro who, based on a LinkedIn post, suggested the case for people who wanted to build a portfolio in Ux Design.
-Leticia Ferreira da Silva
UX Designer and Data Analyst
