User journey map based on experience prototyping May.6

On the basis of the observation, conversation, feedback and all the data from the user research with prototypes, I generated this user journey map. It is the story of one typical user who has built and maintained several online accounts from 2008 to 2013. The persona and story of the user’s interaction with his online accounts are extracted from participants’ experience in different stages of prototypes. 

Online accounts are divided into three groups: frequent-use, ordinary-use and seldom-use accounts. And the persona’s interaction behaviors with his accounts is divided accordingly.

This user journey map helps me to see the typical problems of online identity management issues in a holistic way. The problems arise in different scenarios, which can be grouped according to the account category. Through the whole experience prototyping research, I as a service designer managed to visualize the invisible issues that users confront with during their long-term interaction with online accounts. From service design’s point of view, these accounts can be regarded as different touch-points, which involve different use intention, pattern and interfaces. The quality of users’ online identity management experience may only be defined through how well the touchpoints work together. Therefore the holistic user journey map helps me a lot to start my project.

Prototyping of user experience across platforms-04/26/2013

Based on the first prototype, I develop it into user journey across different platforms. The purpose of the new version is to explore how users deal with online identity building and management not with only one platform but with more others. The researcher will let the participants experience their own identity management processes and choices by themselves and then ask for feedback of insights and issues of the scenario.

This prototype starts from letting participants to choose their frequent online accounts and link them to devices. The first step makes participants begin to think about their online activities and accounts and familiarizes them with online interaction situations. Then the researcher will ask participants to choose the most frequent account and go through the new account building in detailed options such as what kind of passwords and profile image they will choose. After that, the participants will be asked to choose two more accounts and make contrast with the first one. In this step the detailed options of each element of an account will be replaced by simple options of whether it’s the same setting of the previous one or not. During the whole process of building and managing accounts across different platforms, the researcher will keep reminding users to consider the feature of each platform, such as what the users use it for, what kind of information they will show on it, who are the audience of that platform and etc. In this way,  the participants will consider their own management of online accounts and profiles for different platforms in a closer scenario.

The prototype of this prototype was generated before acting with the real participants, I asked classmates from MDS to test the rough one and ask for feedback of how to improve it- such as change the options of online platforms and find a better way to introduce the process. Then I prepared new copies of prototypes, consent forms and introduction of how to go through the prototype for the workshop with participants from Auburn University on their Friday’s visit.

(Experience Prototyping with design students from Auburn University)

The real workshop with participants was successful. They understood the purpose of  the prototypes and how to act with it quickly and gave back very positive feedback. After the experience prototyping, the participants said that they liked the interactive form of survey a lot. And they found that they actually always have different images for different accounts however merely one or two passwords for all of them. They agreed that they set specific purpose for each online platform account and sometimes face problems of managing them. They cared that what other people will find from their social media profiles, as example they mentioned some employers may search for personal sites to gain data. And for some accounts they use less frequently, they may easily forget the password and even whether they have registered. One of the participant offered a new idea of a combined platform for various social networks such as showing different social media sites in one single interface, then user will not need to open each one separately.

All feedback gained from the participants is very useful for my project. Because they have experienced the scenario by themselves, the participants have deeper feeling of how they deal with online multiple identity management issues and be able to offer more insights of this area. From the results of this workshop, I find that users actually have problems with separated online platforms and multiple online identities. Users have their own specific patterns to manage their online accounts but for each user the preference vary a lot.

For my project, as a service designer I would like to see the issue from the holistic view. Different from other service design cases, the multiple online identity management issue is not merely happened in one single platform or service system. The users and each other type of stakeholders could be divided in many groups. And the service I want to provide is not improved from an older one but may be a brand new one. It does not work for one client but for the holistic user experience interacting with platforms from various systems and companies. It’s a big challenge.

Initial prototyping of user experience-04/22/2013

Today I made one initial prototype for experiencing user’s journey when they register one new account online. The purpose is to explore how people choose data for online use and interact with online platforms.

This prototyping is based on initial diary record research and my own experience of creating account on About.me, which is one platform working as online business card and containing various kinds of personal data.

Before the real test, I listed and analyzed what the main process of registering online would be and listed options we may face during this process. It’s a very draft sketch helping me set questions for this prototyping and try to find a form to express the experience:

From feedback of other design for services students, I started to build the first prototype:

It’s still prototype of prototype, which lets me see the scale, size and time cost of the prototype. Then I created my initial prototype:

This prototype imitates the very basic steps to register a new account of social network. I provided choices in each steps that may effect users’ behaviors and show their preference of online personal data management.

Then I tested this prototype with three classmates. I asked them to consider different functions and purposes of the new account- two acted for friends & family connection and one acted for professional network development. This prototyping helps a lot to have a natural conversation between the participant and me of identity management with the scenarios. Also, lots of insights are obtained through this process. Useful feedback and reflection of this initial prototyping is :

• It’s a playful prototype and participants enjoy to move the post-its around to make choices;
• This prototype could be finished fast and participants are able to act with it fluently;
• Depends on different purposes, people may set online personal data in different ways;
• Behaviors of online identity management for the same websites may vary a lot among various users;
• People actually have their own habits and rules for setting online personal information, and they are able to provide reasons for most of their behaviors during this prototyping;
• The participant may be able to see the whole system of online identity setting through this prototype in a new way;
• The next step of prototyping could be ask one participant to set two different accounts to find the contrast between different identities.