Overview
Our client, a prominent GSE, heard the complaints at their customer organizations and sought to plan out a better Identity and Access Management (IAM) system that improved the user journey for both admins and end users. After crafting user archetypes based on research, our team ran a series of client workshops to document the current state service design, as well as multiple iterations of future state service design blueprints that mapped out a better experience for admins to efficiently provision products, and a better experience for end users to onboard and log into those products. Finally, the creative team created prototypes of the admin experience based on the future state blueprint and performed guerilla user testing for concept validation.
My role:
UX Designer working with a more senior associate, Visual Design, Strategy, and Research. Helped drive sketching sessions, wireframing, and prototyping. Assisted in journey/blueprint mapping as well as facilitation and note-taking during workshops.
The Problem
How can we design and plan concrete steps for a better IAM system that makes the processes of provisioning and accessing a suite of products more simple, efficient, and personalized?
2017
Service design blueprinting ● Wireframing & Prototyping ● Guerilla Testing
The Work
Who are we designing for?
In order to understand the current state experience and develop a future vision accordingly, we conducted research with stakeholders, SME’s, and users in different roles at various lending institutions.
Out of this research, we discovered that there were two main personas or types of users at each institution:
End User - the majority of users who interact with various applications to perform servicing tasks
Corporate Admin - individuals who, along with regular duties, are also responsible for provisioning application access to other users
These aggregated personas were crossed with observed behavioral modes to create 6 behavioral archetypes to guide our thinking when considering the future state experience.
What problems are we solving?
We took the data from this research and constructed a current state journey, highlighting key moments of frustration and potential opportunity for both the End Users and Corporate Admins. Some observations include:
No batch capability
Long waiting times for basic tasks that are currently manual rather than automated
Some apps require different provisioning processes, admins are not always informed or trained accordingly
Admins must balance the risk of jobs not getting done (not enough access) vs. security risks (too much access)
This document grounded our teams in a shared, customer-centric understanding of the challenges we were up against.
Let's map out a solution together.
We began a series of facilitated co-creation sessions to piece together the experience, processes, and underlying systems of a better IAM system which would include such features as:
Batch de/provisioning capability
Provisioning templates or “access bundles” based on common job roles to expedite the process and give admins built-in recommendations
Improved educational resources from the GSE
More accurate back-end records synched with those of lending institutions
We fleshed out service design blueprints for the ideal future state as well as an interim hybrid model, working with stakeholders from multiple departments to ensure accuracy and feasibility in the imagined experience.
What could it look like in practice?
Having settled on the concept of access bundles, the Creative Team created wireframed concept flows of how an admin might interact with those bundles in the following use cases:
Search/browse existing access bundles
Create a bundle of foundational permissions based on a job role such as Underwriter or Appraiser
Create a bundle by duplicating an existing one and making modifications
Create a new bundle completely à la carte, from scratch
Clone access from one user to others rather than manually choosing bundles
We then translated these wireframes into clickable Invision prototypes, for user testing and delivery.
How do users feel about the concept?
We performed guerilla user validation with the wireframe prototypes, asking users to share their thoughts as they navigated the provisioning flow. The goal of these sessions was to gauge the salience of an access bundle concept, while gathering feedback on the high-level user experience.
Eventually, we also asked users about a few visually designed UI concepts that our designer had applied to a sample set of key screens. Each version emphasized different user needs and interaction preferences, and the feedback from these sessions helped our GSE stakeholders understand how this new experience might look as a real desktop or tablet interface.
Challenges and lessons learned
The Corporate Admin’s need for flexibility
Each institution could have different requirements for their employees depending on their size and ways of working, from a large bank to a local mom-and-pop shop. We had to create an experience that would be adaptable enough to account for customer differences.
The complexities of roles and data folders
Provisioning did not stop at the app level - each end user had to be assigned roles and data folders with an application, which opened up a design challenge. How could we simplify these complicated bundle attributes in such a way that would be consumable for the Corporate Admin, but still show all the required nuances of the IAM system? We created a few iterations, eventually landing on a table view with ways to sort and filter after speaking with SME’s/users about the data infrastructure.
The Result
At the end of this project, the GSE client received a set of tangible service design blueprints, roadmaps, and prototypes to carry the access bundle concept forward for the next few years.
More importantly, our stakeholders received:
An understanding of the service design process
Increased awareness of knowledge gaps and overlaps between their own departments
The validation that even tactical IAM initiatives can make a huge difference to their customers