Background

In the summer of 2021, I worked at a cybersecurity company focused on providing passwordless experience solutions for both employees and consumers. They achieved this by turning smartphones and computers into encrypted credentialing devices, allowing users to log in to various accounts without entering a password.

When I joined, the company was primarily focused on the workforce market, which meant their authentication app was relatively simple and didn’t require an onboarding process, as employees were onboarded by their IT departments. However, their goal was to expand into the consumer market, which required more user education on how to use the app.

I worked on exploring new design approaches and developing onboarding strategies for consumers using the Beyond Identity app.

Design Sprint

n June 2021, our product design team—consisting of myself, another product designer, and the head of design—participated in a design sprint to evaluate the state of our current authenticator and explore options for its redesign.

The main challenge we aimed to address was: How do we change users’ existing mental models around passwords? How do we explain to the average consumer that they can access accounts without a password, and, more importantly, how do we build trust in this new approach?

While our existing authenticator was effective at the authentication process, it did not effectively communicate the value of Beyond Identity.

We began the week by defining the core functions of Beyond Identity and identifying key concepts that we needed to communicate to consumers. We mapped out what we meant by creating a “chain of trust” across a user’s devices and envisioned what the optimal experience could look like.

To make the app more approachable, we considered renaming it to something simpler and more intuitive—something that could represent the concept of a credential in a way that would resonate with a lay user.

Our goals were:‍

- To provide a secure and convenient authentication experience for end-users.

- To enable platform administrators (such as developers) to offer end-users seamless access from any device.

We drew inspiration from competitors and analyzed how they positioned their value in the market.

Throughout the week, we conducted several rounds of rapid prototyping and testing with friends and family. Our goal was to identify a general direction for the redesign. We experimented with different approaches in terms of language and the use of illustrations to better represent how users could authenticate without a password.

Overall, we found that using graphics, imagery, and simple language was most effective in communicating our value. By the end of the week, we had a strong direction to move forward with, which led me to continue user testing, define the app​.

User Testing

After our design sprint, I conducted a series of user tests with six participants from diverse backgrounds to guide our next steps. These tests revealed several key trends:

- Users appreciated the concept of not having to set or manage passwords: Many users expressed that they liked the explanation and the idea of not having to manage passwords, which they found cumbersome. This was especially relevant to older demographics, who often rely on tools like their Notes app to store passwords.

"I can see that this is something they are trying to sell to me that I can start using my apps without actually having a password, which I absolutely hate! I wish with the blink of an eye I could open my apps without a freaking password."

- However, users felt uneasy about linking their accounts to their phone: They were still unclear about the benefits of replacing passwords with credentials and why this approach was better for them. This made them feel like they had less control over their accounts.

“I would want to know how I can stop it. How do I log out of Etsy. What if I want to switch accounts. How do I get rid of this?”

- Some users felt that creating a credential was too quick and easy, which led them to question its trustworthiness: However, most users were still interested in using this method to replace their passwords due to its simplicity, even if they didn’t fully understand how it worked.

"I would do it because it’s easy but I have no idea what I’m doing."

‍

Workshops

After our design sprint week, I conducted a workshop to bring the rest of the product team, including product managers and engineers, into the redesign process. During the workshop, we began defining the key user tasks our authenticator needed to address and explored how to solve these using our product framework.

We aligned on the challenges to tackle, the initial scope, and the key jobs to be done for the first iteration of the authenticator redesign.

Using the insights from the workshop, I began creating an information architecture diagram for the new authenticator. This diagram incorporated existing components of the app as well as future features that were either in development or planned for inclusion in the coming months.

Results

We built a version of the redesigned authenticator for a hackathon using Flutter. Many of our original designs were adapted to fit within the Material Design framework, as this approach would streamline development and make it faster and easier