Context

Why this project started? What was the initial hypothesis? Who were you designing for? What was the timeframe?

ATM.com experienced a high volume of customer support tickets relating to the unsuccessful app login and password recovery as the mobile app began to grow and acquire new users.

Team structure

I worked as the lead on this project with guidance from the design director, Ayo. I worked with product manager, Soren, to define constraints and and minimum product requirements. My role included conducting competitive research for this feature, coming up with new user flows, and working cross-functionally with backend engineering to understand the level of effort required for this feature update.

Timeframe

Mar 2021 – June 2021

Problem

What was the problem?

During the new user registration flow, users were often putting burner email addresses or mistyping them in (for example inputting “.con” instead of “.com”).

Later, when users would try to log in to the app, they were running into issues receiving the password reset link which were being sent to either nonexistent or mistyped emails.

When users were unable to log in, they would try to create a new account using an existing phone number but run into a “duplicate account” error. This led to a number of dissatisfied users, higher app abandonment, and lower app store reviews.

Approach

What was your process from initial problem to the final solution. What were the steps?

Discovery

Stakeholder interviews – I met with our Customer Support team who had brought up in all-hands meetings that ticket volume was increasing steadily as the app gained traction. I learned after interviewing and looking at the types of support tickets submitted that frustration with app login/account recovery was one of the biggest offenders.

The CS lead also explained that these types of tickets were impossible to resolve because if the user didn’t have a valid email address on file, the CS team was not able to send out the password reset link needed for the user to successfully log in. Updating the email address on file was a security risk, so the users were left without an option to get back into the app.

Define

How might we help users log in / recover accounts more easily?

Existing User Flow Evaluation

I looked at three of the user flows to see where there might be gaps or room for improvements:

1. New user registration
2. Account recovery
3. Existing user login

New user registration

With the new user registration flow, I found that there was no requirement for the user to validate the email address provided before getting into the app.

In addition, the signup form had 3 fields all on one screen, which meant more cognitive load on the user.

Account recovery

The existing account recovery flow only allowed users to get a password reset link via the email they registered with. This posed a major issue if the user happened to enter a nonexistent email address or mistyped email address.

Even though a phone number was provided and verified by the user at the time of account creation, the phone number was not used for a pw reset or account login via OTP.

Existing user login

The existing user login flow only allowed the user to log in via email/password combination. Phone number login was not available.

Competitive Analysis

I researched a number of apps such as Uber, Robinhood, Venmo, Cashapp, Uber, and more to understand how these companies approached account creation and password recovery. From my findings, I discovered that the majority of the apps had at least two methods of log in — with email/password combination, phone/password combination.

Some apps such as Uber also utilized one-time passwords (OTP) on recognized devices from which the user had previously logged in successfully, making it extremely simple for a user to get back into the app.

Output

Design artifacts. Your role and specific contributions to the project.

My role and individual contribution

• Led this initiative
• Competitive analysis
• UX flows
• Wireframes
• Final designs

Outcome

Success metrics & outcomes. what was the impact on the business or the users?

The login flow redesign resulted in a significant reduction in customer support tickets related to account recovery.

It also allowed users to log in successfully without the help of customer support and update any incorrect email addresses on file so that future password reset links would be sent to the correct address.