Accou is a fictional product created as part of a six-day case study focused on Human-centered design. The goal was to create a central place where digital accounts and their remaining data could be controlled by selected people and continued to be managed in the event of one’s own demise.
If you were asked right now how many digital accounts you have, could you list them all? Because I can’t. Probably most of us have a huge collection of accounts, and it’s getting bigger as life goes on. But have you ever wondered what happens to all those accounts in the event of your death? Or, to put it another way, what happens to your digital footprint?
This question defined our challenge and the way we tried to tackle this problem. Through repeated user testing and a strong focus on Human-centered design, we created a concept and high-fidelity prototype.
My Role
What was achieved
After bringing the ideas down, we started a research phase looking at existing solutions and approaches. Our research has shown that many existing solutions are based on a traditional will. Most importantly, they are not based on a true transfer of one’s “digital fingerprint” to a selected person in a closed ecosystem.
However, we found some services that took a different approach and offered self-deletion after a certain period of inactivity instead of data transfer.
It was up to us in which direction we wanted to go with our project, so we first started with an ideation process. In a first brainstorming session we worked out different ideas by writing down current and future issues.
Using a subsequent Crazy-8-method, we broke down our ideas so that we could already start with initial wireframe sketches on paper, which inspire further discussion and helped us think about possible ways forward.
By drawing the wireframes paper first, we were able to discuss and implement changes quickly as a team. Before we created a digital low-fidelity prototype for user testing, we first wanted to create an easy-to-understand user experience on paper.
1. User testing
To gain insight into user behavior, we asked students in our school cafeteria to complete several tasks in our low-fidelity prototype. We observed their behavior and found various weaknesses and ambiguities in our concept, such as bad navigation points and confusion in the profile settings. After the usability test, we categorized and prioritized the results (shown below) and integrated them into an improved version of our low-fidelity prototype.
2. Card-sorting workshop
With the improved version, we proceeded to do a card sorting workshop to test the structure and navigation of the app. For this purpose, we created two categories on post-its, one representing terms from the main structure and the other from the navigation of the app. Respondents were then asked to match the subcategories to the correct top categories. Most of our hierarchy was reproduced correctly – that was a success.
As a result of several user tests we were able to improve some things. For a better overview, here is a before/after comparison of the most important changes.
We took inspiration for the design from the 2020 niche design trend – Newmorphism, a newer version of Skeuomorphism. We knew it could be tricky, since none of our team had actually used this design language before. But since this was a fictional product, we had nothing to lose, so we tried to simulate analog behavior on a digital interface. During the design process, as we had already guessed, we encountered some difficulties, which are described in more detail in the challenges. Take a closer look at the final designs:
Problem
One challenge was to explain the complexity of a digital will to the user in a simple understandable way.
How was the problem solved?
By testing with real people, we were able to identify problem areas and get direct feedback from users, which allowed us to reduce the complexity of a will by reducing unnecessary or confusing steps or even entire UI elements.
Problem
With Newmorphism several problems appeared in the design process, such as: contrast problems, lack of distinguishability of elements, low freedom of design, etc.
How was the problem solved?
We tried to counteract the problems by taking a step back and using a mix of Newmorphism and individual UI elements based on Flat Design. In conclusion, I would say that it was fun to try out Newmorphism, but I definitely wouldn’t use it again for a next project.
