During my time at Alliance Data, I've mainly supported the UX design of Account Center. When I joined the company in September 2015, the platform was in the middle of a large scale redesign, and I was privileged to lead the UX effort on one of its largest pain points: Password Reset.
As part of four focus groups conducted in Alliance Data Call Centers, associates were asked to identify the top 10 Account Center issues they received calls about. In all four groups, password reset was ranked the top issue, making this particular redesign a high priority.
Alliance Data Card Services
Dec 2015 - Apr 2016
Password reset on Account Center was not only outdated, but also ineffective. Users were constantly getting confused by the multi-stepped process, leading to high abandonment rates and call center volume.
Card Sort results from Call Center Focus Groups
Following competitive market research, I created scenario flows for all of the possible steps and actions a user needs to take to reset their password. These also included scenarios for the "Out of Band" process (i.e. user needs to confirm their identity due to a new sign-in device), as the two processes have a lot of overlap.
Password Reset Flows
With a better understanding of the process, I began ideating on possible solutions. After some solo whiteboarding sessions, I brought my ideas to the larger UX group for further brainstorming. Together we got to a place where I was comfortable moving forward to digital wireframes and mockups.
An Early Low Fidelity Mock Up for Password Reset
I was feeling pretty good with how this new design was turning out, so it was time to put it to the test. I created a functioning, clickable prototype of the experience and had four users try it out. The first round of tests didn't go so well. I identified that our users were mostly getting confused around the request ID code step. The options weren't presented clearly enough, and if the code didn't arrive immediately they were unsure of what to do. Users also found it somewhat disorienting that each step was on a new page, with no clear indication of previous actions they took.
My solutions to these issues were to (1) add a "safety net" step where the user chooses if they received their code, and (2) keep the entire reset password process on one page. For the second solution I thought it was important to hide any steps the user wasn't ready to see yet. Once ready the page would pleasantly scroll to the next task, creating a trail for the user to review if needed.
I tested the updated design again with three different users and one from the previous round of testing. To my delight, the users were 100% successful in completing all tasks, and the feedback we received was nothing but positive.
Click to View the Working Prototype
Usability Testing
With the design now in a good place, it was time to document it. This was one of the first projects to utilize our new digital (i.e. html) UX specifications, a now standard practice that I pioneered on the team. To this point our specifications were just a simple PDF document, but with the complexity of this project and the newly added animations, a PDF was not going to suffice.
The new html specification document helped portray micro-interactions in the experience and made sorting through requirements much easier.
The redesigned Password Reset process was launched in April 2016 to great results. A second round of Call Center focus groups were conducted in May 2017, one year after the redesign went live. The same card sorting exercise was performed that previously had "Password Reset" as the top issue across the board. This time though, it didn't crack the top 10 for all of the groups surveyed. That alone makes this the project I'm most proud of in my career.