HomeOverviewFindingsDesign SolutionsOutcome

Samsung + SCAD

Research

Role

  • UX Researcher & UI Designer
  • Research
  • Wireframing
  • Interaction Design
  • Prototyping
  • User Testing

Team

Two developers (one front-end, one back-end), one project manager, one project supervisor, one chief investigator and one Lead UX Researcher and UI Designer (me)

Tools

  • Adobe Creative Suite
  • Sketch
  • Zeplin
  • Overflow
  • Miro
  • Airtable

Overview

City of Austin's Innovation Office, committed to help people store and share their IDs and documents safely, sought to facilitate people's access to services, especially those vital to ending homelessness, such as housing, benefits and access to medical care.

10-week project

For optimum view, please turn your phone to landscape :)

Ok, got it.

Technology pioneers from Samsung launched this internship project with the goal of outsourcing a creative vision to a team of talented designers curated by SCAD. They know autonomous cars are the future of transportation, and they needed help in exploring their potential to contribute in this rapidly growing industry.
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Mission

To help everyone (especially those most vulnerable) have a dedicated platform to house their most important important documents.

As lead UX Researcher and sole UI Designer , I was elected to architect, prototype and polish an entire document storage web application from scratch.

Story

"I felt like a prisoner to my own identity.
So much of what I do depends on that piece of plastic."
‍~Donna, Member of Austin Homelessness Advisory Committee

For decades, we've been relying on physical hard copies of documents. Whether it's the liability of digital assets, or simply a resistance to change, digital IDs seem like a futuristic prop you see in sci-fi movies. So far off our current reality that the question "why can't I have my passport in my phone?" is shrugged off as quickly as it comes into our brain; hardly a reoccurring thought.
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And yet, we are closer to that reality than we realize. LifeFiles sought to challenge this idea, taking technological breakthroughs in verifiable credentials and packaging them in an accessible and intuitive platform anyone can use. It's about helping people with important documents that can ripple into life-changing access to services.

It's about making an impact and changing people's lives, like Donna's.

Design Process

After immersing myself in the years of research from City of Austin's Innovation Office, I started by conducting a small interactive workshop with AHAC (Austin's Homeless Advisory Committee) both to introduce myself to what would later become one of our most valuable pool of user testers and to better understand the lived experience of people who struggle to keep their documents safe.

See the data
or
See the results

Through this, I gained a better understanding of psychological factors to consider when designing for a vulnerable population such as their daily habits, their digital literacy, their access to technology, and their cognitive condition. This was instrumental in designing a platform that was accessible and user-friendly.

I then turned to sketching  what would later become the very first low-fi wireframes for LifeFiles.

Tap, click or mouse over the categories above :)

Design Deliverables

I also created a brand book and a design system to better organize assets and help conduct hand-offs to my development team. These also serve as catalyst for product development as the platforms grows and scales from MVP to launch.

See the official LifeFiles design system

AUTONOMOUS TECHNOLOGY
WILL CHANGE EVERYTHING

Research

As I dove into user research, one thing became apparent: accessibility was key. A lot of people experiencing homelessness have a direct dependency with key players in the homeless ecosystem such as their case workers, outreach organizations and family members.

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Research in...
Case Workers
Documents
Organizations

To delineate our proof of concept, I conducted field research, interviewed multiple service organizations and determined the nature of their document policies and understand how they interact with document Owners.

Here are a few of the organizations that helped us with our research as well as some collaborative partners we gathered along the way...

Robert Wood Johnson Foundation

Front Steps

So we had a working prototype for 'Document Owners' but through this research I realized we needed a separate interface for another type of user: 'Document Helpers.'

Document Owner

'Document Owners' use this platform as a way to backup their documents and facilitate their access to services. They are the ultimate authority over how their digital files are stored, who they are shared with and for how long.

Document Helper

'Document Helpers' use this platform to assist documents owners in storing their digital files. Their ability to upload, download, access and print files is conditioned by the permissions the document owners bestow them.

User Feature
Breakdown

We also learned that some key organizations required these digital documents to have some form of legal validity or certifications. This is where digital notarization came in and document 'Helpers' happened to be the perfect way to introduce this feature.

Document Owners, the main users of LifeFiles, add Helpers to their network if they need any kind of assistance with their documents. Not only could document 'Helpers' assist 'Owners' in uploading their documents, but notary case workers can also use this notarization feature to create legally valid copies of client documents.

The Helper account role and notarization features proved to be a breakthrough, where we leveraged blockchain technologies, verifiable credentials and smart contracts to produce a digital notarization feature that met all Texas notarization legal requirements and baked them into the web application. See here, for more information about how it works.

Findings

The research also uncovered some valuable insights as to the magnitude of a problem we were solving.
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Here are a few numbers we uncovered...

50%

of HOST (Homelessness Outreach Street Team) clients who are seeking access to 13 vital services lack an ID

80%

of clients from TOOF (The Other Ones Foundation) lack one or more key documents for services

$20,000

are spent annually by DACC and Trinity Center on replacing lost or stolen documents

1200 hrs

of TOOF staff time is spent in a year helping clients procure documents

All of which are problems that feed into the vicious cycle of loosing and replacing documents. A solution like this would massively reduce or eliminate these numbers by enabling people backup and certify their documents digitally.

Another important breakthrough came when researching the accessibility of the platform. We realized that to ensure every user (even those most vulnerable) could retain access to their account, we needed more than just a simple username and password.
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So I came up with four basic categories of verification, and we implemented a variety of login methods. This gave users options when authenticating their account.

What you have
Who you know
What you know
What you are

Someone's ideal account recovery method may be a nightmare for someone else. This is even more prevalent in a vulnerable population. One person experiencing homelessness may have a gifted memory and do well with passwords, others may struggle to remember even their mother’s maiden name. Without flexibility in authentication, you automatically exclude some users and run the risk of locking out others over time as their conditions change or their cognitive state deteriorates.

Design Solutions

And yet leaving things this open leads to another problem... how can we make sure users choose the option that is right for them?

For this, I designed an onboarding quiz that asks specific questions related to the different login methods. Based on the answers, the quiz produces a set of login method recommendations.

This way, we give some guidance, but the decision always falls back on the user. As user tests showed us, only they know their comfort with technology and are capable of making a decision on how to make the most of it.

And that's how LifeFiles came to be...

MyPass is a secure document storage solution designed to help people store and share IDs and documents digitally with service providers.

An identity storage solution

How does it work?

1
Upload

User uploads their document into the LifeFiles platform.

2
Share

User shares the document with contacts in their network.

3
Notarize

If a notarized copy is needed, a licensed notary can stamp, sign and upload it.

4
Verify

Verifiers use an external site to successfully verify the document's credentials.

An identity storage solution

How does it work?

1
Upload

User uploads their document into the MyPass platform.

2
Share

User shares the document with contacts in their network.

3
Notarize

If a notarized copy is needed, a licensed notary can stamp, sign and upload it.

4
Verify

Verifiers use an external site to successfully verify the document's credentials.

What's the benefit of using LifeFiles?

Conventional

In-person and impractical, physical documents can only be verified when the client is present.
Traditional Approach
  • Easily lost or damaged
  • Must be shared in person, one person at a time
  • Cannot be duplicated or altered
  • Can be signed, stamped and notarized

With LifeFiles

Digitally certified and encrypted, MyPass allows for the decentralized distribution of certified documents, allowing for remote verification and secure shareability.
LifeFiles Approach
  • Cannot be lost or damaged
  • Can be shared remotely, with multiple parties
  • Cannot be duplicated or altered
  • Can be signed, stamped and notarized
Installation Guide
gITHUB

What's the benefit of using MyPass?

Conventional

In-person and impractical, physical documents can only be verified when the client is present.
Traditional Approach
  • Easily lost or damaged
  • Must be shared in person, one person at a time
  • Cannot be duplicated or altered
  • Can be signed, stamped and notarized

With LifeFiles

Digitally certified and powerfully encrypted, LifeFiles allows for the distribution of certified documents, allowing for remote verification and shareability.
Lifefiles Approach
  • Cannot be lost or damaged
  • Can be shared remotely, with multiple parties
  • Cannot be duplicated or altered
  • Can be signed, stamped and notarized

But how do I know I can trust these these digital copies?

Verification Page

For a platform you can trust

For seamless verification and transparency, we created a verification page that breaks down all encryption, decryption, hashing and verification steps in a comprehensive site, thoroughly examining each document to determine whether it is a valid notarized and shareable document.

Digital signature is used

Demo
gITHUB
Demo
gITHUB
Demo
gITHUB

Easy to use

Enter the document's DID Address, upload the digitally notarized filed and verify any document in seconds.

Easy to understand

Built-in infographics help explain the cryptographic process of how this document was digitally notarized.

Easy to audit

Steps are broken down by code, offering full transparency as to how the document is processed and verified.

Outcome

While the platform is still in Alpha and has yet to launch, here are a few things we've been hearing from service providers, case workers and user testers...

“I think this would be so helpful since a huge barrier services/jobs/housing is often a lack of documents that clients have because their bags were lost, stolen, rained on, etc. It would be great for that process to be electronic so that nothing gets lost.”
Case worker from The Other's Foundation
"I think this would be hugely beneficial for our clients. We do something similar to this now [backup client documents] but it is not notarized and the clients don't have access to the program. It would very beneficial if there was mutual access to such a program. I love this idea
Case worker at sunrise Church
"I feel confident in uploading documents. I believe this will save the client time and frustration."
Case worker at Front Steps
This could save me hundreds in fees in replacing lost documents. I've been wondering when something like this would show up.
pERSON EXPERIENCING hOMELESSNESS
It's a way for me to store my documents conveniently. I can access them anywhere anytime without having to carry them around or fear them getting rained on or stolen.
pERSON EXPERIENCING hOMELESSNESS
LifeFiles is a means of assuring pertinent documents become unlose-able and these electronic copies on this platform are finally useful as official and legal docs.
pERSON EXPERIENCING hOMELESSNESS
Pablo Portilla del Valle
p.portilladv@gmail.com
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