Protect referral Loop
Project Overview
Following the score launch and the soft rebrand of the protect product, the team started to focus in on growth efforts. We discovered that some users were sharing the product but we didn’t understand the motivation. I went into discovery with fresh insights and developed some ideas with the team to reward users that are security savvy
Role
Product Designer
Timeline
3 Weeks
Project Snapshot
Problem
Little understanding as to why user’s share the product
No real benifit for the user to share the product right now
Very small time frame to fix user problem
Process
Understand - Went into problem discovery to better understand as is state and user mindsets
Ideation - Workshop with wider team to reward users
Design - Created content and early flow explain the proposition
Iterate - Navigated some legal concerns and user considerations
Deliver - Finished designs
Impact
(Wasn’t at the company when the feature launched, so don’t have any metrics for this one!
Solution
Designed a sharing mechanic to enable more security aware users help those in their circle be safer
Final Designs (Mobile)
End to End Journey
Parts of the Process
PART 1
CONTEXT
ClearScore Protect advert
Introduction
This project took place at ClearScore within the Protect team. Protect was a 1 year old identity protection service which had recently pivoted from a dark web monitoring password finder into a more robust identity protection service with found many types of sensitive information online and had credit report protection features
How this project began
Brief came in the form of a solution with little grounding in user needs. Was to design more sharing tools that could send to facebook and twitter. Wasn’t too much user insight or understanding based off business needs. Chose to take the project back to into discovery after a brief chat with product
Research Brief
Reframing the opportunity
Very little known about the problem area, we did have some clear metrics and a few constraints. Attempted to fill out a design brief for this but concluded that we needed to research to reframe the opportunity
Research Goal - Gain a stronger understanding of why Protect user’s are sharing our product, Why user’s share products in general, gain a stronger understanding of how value cycles in work, what makes effective ones and how this can translate to Protect's offering
Methodologies
Secondary Research - Look over user insights
Desk Research - Acquisition Loops
Competitor Analysis - Sharing features
UX Audit - ClearScore sign up / As is state
Product Data - Usage
Team Interviews - Sharing Technology
part 2
Discovery
Understanding user needs and business opportunity
As - is State
Current sharing feature
Current Sharing Mechanisms
Product already had a sharing mechanism from the older product, was pretty basic. It shared a simple message that auto formatted into a few platforms. Product should be shared in 4 ways and existed at the bottom of the homescreen of the product. It didn’t offer the user anything if shared
Little incentive to share
Sharing data
Reception
Looked into see if we had any data, around 30 clicks a day which didn’t nessassrily track to shares. This number only tracks initial button press within the product. For example, to share to twitter means that you have to press “share” within protect and then hit “send tweet” when message auto loads. We had no visibility on end to end sharing just the start of it
The share metric was likely even lower than shown here
User Reaction
So 2 sharing links are for twitter and facebook (social media) which would create a public post for most people to see. Whatsapp and Email share could go either way in that it shares to a signle person or a group of people. The sharing message was the same for each
Interestingly there was people who shared the default message but others who shared screenshots of their account (which is not safe at all!) Lots of sentiment around how easy the feature is to use. Did notice a correlation that people spoke to certain accounts which was meaningful to them were leaked. Lots of example saying that this feature helped them fix a banking password or password to their social media
Sharing might be more effective in relation to certain leaked information
Protect Users
Two types of users
The Apathetic User and the Worried User
From an earlier research period during the 2.0 discovery we found evidence of 2 sets of behaviour and attitudes. These are mostly quite top level but it has been used to largely aim certain feature sets and aspects of the product for effectiveness
Sharing mechanism might only be effective for one of the user types
Signals from users
We also had some other insights from earlier that I re looked at. We might also be able to increase general education. We might also shock a lot of people with doing this as most people have a false sense of security for fraud risks
Sharing mechanism might potentially bring multiple types of social benefit for safety
Product Audit
Registration Process
This is a top level view of the process to signing up for a ClearScore. There are many outcomes to this process some of which are dependent other external factors. If someone falsely guesses their address history which is registered by the government it would mean that their credit file gets locked. Process takes at least 10 to 15 minutes and in some cases multiple attempts
Signing up to ClearScore is massively high effort task for the user, requires legal documents to authenticate a credit file
Comparator Analysis
Companies Rewarding Sharing
Looked at Deliveroo, Monzo and Dropbox. All reward and incentive sharing in a different manner. Some of the reward was centered around getting more from the companies value proposition. Deliveroo gives you free credit to order food, making it easy to start ordering. Dropbox gives you free access on sharing it with another user. Some loops can be stacked like dropbox, with rewards for sharing up to 16 people
2 types of people you can reward (Sharer and Receiver)
Successful loops are based around generating value around the products value prop
Acquisition Loops
Desk research into viral loops
Viral loops are promoted by building features into your product that make sharing faster, easier or more rewarding for your users. Nielsen group found the following 92% of respondents trusted referrals from friends they knew, 77% of consumers are more likely to buy a new product when learning about it from friends or family
Users more likely to buy a new product from a friend or family referal
Users trust referrals from people they knew
“Growth Loop”
The 3 phases
A type of viral loop can be classified as a growth loop with 3 clear steps. Whatever we decided to do needs to exists across all 3 phase or it’s not a growth loop, understanding the pitfalls of the current product and were a user might drop off is key for this
What are the 3 steps for us?
Receives an email or sign up link?
Completes a task?
On task completion it fires out a link?
Reforge
Growth Loop
This was an interesting part to the process, we hand’t really thought about all the different types of rewards. The company hadn’t had an experience of doing anything financial as an incentive which is odd for a credit company. For Protect financial incentive could make the subscription cheaper or free fora time which could be a powerful driver
Pirate Metrics
The classic funnel for acquisition work might come in handy here because it forces us to think about when does a protect user enter into the referral stage? We don’t really know this just yet but we are assuming for a free user it could be after they’ve used it for more than 6 months and for a paid user we assume that they already are in the referral stage
Product Value
Value for the user?
This shows some of the feature set of the protect service. Starting to think about what things we could give for free or what aspects of the value we could change if someone starts sharing the product. Giving out the right value set is going to be key to driving sign ups
Sharing Technology
Sharing Technology
Protect was a webview on the native app so the share sheets from iOS and Android aren’t usable most of the time. On top of that the sharing technical methods can be different depending on what what types of information is shared. We also have only looked at certain platforms for now (in blue) and to do more could change the amount of work
Key Insights
Incentivising users might only be affect with the super user / anxiety type
There is lots of types of ways to reward users, some monatry other with social proof and so fourth
Only a few sharing mechisms are somewhat popular or useful - Like Deliveroo
Recommendations from trusted friends tend to mean higher product engagment or chance of paying
ClearScore registration process is high effort, sharing mechanism needs to generate high value in order for the “loop” to close
Sharing sensitive information or for a security product has to be treated with care
PART 3
Ideation workshop
Opportunity Statement
“How might we meaningfully create growth loops that enhance a user’s experience and create more value for the business?”
Workshop Screenshot
Workshop Structure
[Intro] - Ice Breaker Questions
[Playback] - Highlighted user insights and intro’d the concept of loop
[Theme] - Problem Statement Playback
[Exercise] - HMW Reward users?
[Exercise] - HMW Create a successful loop?
Who to invite?
Team
I tried to pull people within the company with different levels of understanding with the product as well a mix of disciplines
Rewarding users
Themes
We started to group some of the ideas into a couple features, some came in the form of giving a cheaper subscription, a one off prize, a score increase or something like a badge of honour like a twitter blue tick (Or it once was)
Matrix of impact
We played with quite a few concepts like creating a feature were you try and hack your friend and get points when you inform them! Another idea was that we could create growth loops by sharing your protect score and if someone downloads from your post you get a cheaper subscription
Chosen Concept - Risk Finder
We went for more of a classic approach which would highlight to a user the amount of things they might need to action. It felt more on brand with what the product has been, also it would be quite feasible based on the impact it could drive
Open Questions
What is the reward for the user? Discount on premium product? Score Increase?
HMW avoid sharing sesntive information?
PART 4
Developing The Solution
Design Brief
“Create value for current Protect users who want to encourage better safety habits for friends / family”
Defining business and user success
Now that the feature was more clear, we had a few thoughts on how would be measure success. We could quite easily track onboardings for the feature and overall download rate of the apps
Product Activations (Primary Metrics)
Product Downloads (Sign Ups)
Top level flow
Box Flows
Grey boxes show what the user would be able to at different parts of the journey. The “Sharer” journey is shown here but the receiver journey hadn’t had thought put into it just yet. We assumed that the end of the sharer journey would launch an email to the other
Initial Draft of the Journey
First Draft - Social Proof
This was the first Inital attempt at creating the risks found journey, it will quite simple and only contains functional information. The receiver journey hadn’t been thought about just yet
Flow
Overview - Nothing changes apart from the entry point
Primer Page - intro the user into the feature and what it does. Email address prompt here
Loading pages - This is the “Scanning experience” in which we build the user’s expectations
Results Page - This highlights that that email address has risks attached to it
Reward - Social proof and counter
Early flow including some interaction and visual elements
Proposition naming
We didn’t spend to much time here but the content design aspect of this is quite important. We played with some visuals but the core of this was always aimed at friends and family so there wasn’t too many variations of copy we wanted to try. We focused less on hackers and preventing bad things but more creating good things for people you care about
Iteration of some aspects
Iteration | More Context
Results page has more helpful information. Also tease content for the newer user to send an email to the affect new user. Base page now has a social mechanisms
Primer (Left)
Added Social counter to reward the user for helping other
More helpful information on safety of the feature and that it wouldn’t contain visible exposed information
Added some quotes about
Results (Right)
Result page now teases more information
Shows the number of risks to push the primerily user to send an email so that the receiver user can begin their protect journey
Results page now also has more steps to show to sharer user
Flow for both users
Sharer journey has many different variations as it has to account for scanning, sending emails, finding nothing, finding something and choose to send a risk report
Green Flow - All sharer journeys variations and edge cases
Gold Flow - All receiver journeys journey variations and edge cases
Desirability Testing
Was starting to get a bit nervous of how users would use this service so started to do some loose user tests with a range of people. While they weren’t real users they were people who have used Protect before. Test format was a loosely structured question set as a user interacted with a prototype with a few tasks in mind
Key Insights
User said that they would only use the feature if the person they used it for was right next to them (In a social setting)
Some users questioned if we would email them multiple times
People didn't feel the email sending was clear enough
Top section isn't communication the steps and proposition well enough to drive intent
Changes
Strip back the primer page to have less information (Reduce categories, reduce Insights Panel metrics, Did you kno
Break the "Primer" state into a few steps not 1 (Ease user into proposition and introduce information in chunks)
Introduce rules / steps sub page
Email the receiver user would receive
Receiver Journey
The email that the user would receiver from the friend would need to be friendly and contain certain information that would be informative in relation to risks but not too detail or it might scare the newer user of which we haven’t built a relationship just yet. We have 2 variation of the emails depending of the status of that user. We also had information of the sharer so the receiver isn’t worried when opening it
A round of restructuring and refining content
Problems!
After playing the progress of the work back to leadership some were worried that the feature could be used for harm rather than good and were concerned about how this would affect the company. We looked at a range of concerns and decided to act in some places, park some things and make some calls in parts of the journey
HMW drive positive intent
HMW prevent brand risks
HMW communicate more clearly how this product earlier in the journey
Adding limiters
We decided to add some limiters to the product so someone couldn’t be spammed or used maliciously. We added notifications for the sharer user so they understood happens when aspects of the journey don’t continue. We also had a limit to searches because we only get a certain amount of manual search before it affects commercial returns as we pay for hits
Creating Rules
So in order to clear up how this service was meant to be used we laid out for the user what to do and what they shouldn’t. We did this because we got some concerns about how users would game this service or use the brand to do questionable acts to people they have the email off
We ended up cutting most of this but we chose to carry forward some of the information in the first and third extra page
Structure of the Experience
Now that the solution had some user testing under the belt and had navigated some of the challenges with legal and stakeholders we started to see a clear purpose for each part of the journey. While aspects of the UI and comms would still change but there’s some clear rules now
Iteration | Communication Streamlining
Results page has more helpful or streamlined information. Also tease content for the newer user to send an email to the affect new user
Primer (Left)
Added a section to reinforced how safe this feature is and how it respects privacy
Social proof metric has had more visual enforcement put on it
Removed person selector, wasn’t received well in testing
Results (Right)
Removed some information around breaches types and dates
Added a lot more information on what would be sent to the receiver and how it will help them
Iteration | Visual Design Highlights
Thank you page (Left)
IA update
Visual enforcement put on social stat on success risk report sent
Searching Page (Right)
Made a lot of visual improvements
Added more information on how to use the service and the implications of it
PART 5
Final Design
Final Flow
Key Learnings / Reflection
I was happy with how we navigated legal complexity with this one, it wasn’t easy and a feature like this. So many aspects of driving business growth could cause legal issues with user GDPR
Balancing act of giving a user the power to help other and incentives them to behave in a certain manner isn’t a given. Some people will use a tool for good and others for personal gain
Growth loops are hard to get right, this wasn’t simple to do. Think we might have been able to better incentive the user, had planned to give a discount to the paid product depending on amount of successful shares
Discovery did spin a bit, could have stuck in a bit closer to user needs a bit more as looking back I spent more time looking at how loops work and not driving insights around user needs
Thank you for reading