Flimflam - UX/UI Design

Flimflam is an application designed to teach those 60 and older to avoid becoming victims of financial fraud.

My Role: UX Researcher, Design Strategy, UX/UI Designer [end to end]

Tools: Figma, Invision, Illustrator, Photoshop

My Story

Like many people with older parents, I became de facto “tech support“ for my older family members. I learned of my Mom’s confusion and frustration with critical “lifeline” websites such as banking, grocery, and doctor’s offices. When I began studying user experience design I immediately wanted to find a way to help improve the digital experience for older users.

Why Fraud?

As soon as I began researching the user experience challenges for people, 60 years old and over, fraud was always a primary concern and significant obstacle for older users. They are among the most targeted groups of fraud and were experiencing the largest financial losses of any other group. I decided to seek out a solution that would help relieve these concerns.

The Problem

Fraud affects millions each year, adding up to billions of dollars according to the Federal Bureau of Investigation. They are being targeted through voice calls, texts, email, and social media with identity theft, credit card fraud, and even fake tech support. Information, education, and approachable strategies are lacking or are presented in complex, difficult-to-understand language or on the very technologies, these older victims are struggling to use in the first place.

Design Process

I followed the design thinking process to ensure that each element of my final product's design were rooted in research.

My Research Approach

The goal is to understand the parameters of fraud that older users were experiencing.

• What types of fraud are being committed?

• Who is being targeted for fraud?

• Which pain points are most urgent to address?

• Which prevention strategies are most successful?

Top Frauds in 2020

Telephone and email are the preferred tools of older users. Fraud criminals are aware of these preferences and use them to improve their chances of gaining access to older victims.

Fraud Totals by Age

Older fraud victims lose 3X as much money per incident of fraud than any other group.

Design of Fraud Crime

Many people feel shame or embarrassment for falling victim to fraud. In fact, these crimes are meticulously designed to put people off guard and into emotional uncertainty. Thier goal is to shift thier targets into unfamiliar circumstances that are outside their typical experiences. Fraud is designed to trick rational people into irrational decisions.

Fraud is successful when tired, distracted, frightened, or anxious people make hasty decisions. It’s by design.

The Grandparent Scam

This is a scam that wakes up older victims late at night with unsettling, urgent news about someone they love. Reacting out of emotion, surprise, and a desire to help a family member. The victims quickly transmit funds to a person they are told is in a position of authority, who can remove the danger, but only if they act quickly.

Identity Theft

Identity theft was often cited as a concern to my interview subjects, however, details of how it is committed were not well understood. Identity theft is achieved by collecting enough parts of a victim’s identity, that when put together enable a criminal to open an account or fool a website into delivering products or even withdrawing money.

Identity theft is a collection of parts used to assemble a new false identity

Design Challenge

How might we use technology to educate those 60 and older in order to help them avoid becoming victims of personal financial fraud.

Interviews

I interviewed five people aged 61-86, each was a mobile phone user, had online financial accounts, shopped online, used either a tablet or desktop computer, or both and all had experience with financial fraud. I used the same interview script for all.

Which pain points are most urgent?

The interview process with the selected age group of 60+ provides the opportunity to specifically identify pain points that can become the mechanism for the design of the digital solution.

Pain Points/Frustrations

The pain points and frustrations revealed in the interview process coalesced in the users feeling isolated, unprotected, and lacking information to protect themselves. They found the information available to be confusing, sometimes contradictory, and filled with technical jargon. The users were trying to make good choices but found some of the solutions to be complicated and difficult to adopt into their day-to-day habits.

“My password management system?... I have an Irish Stew recipe, (don't tell anyone). I add my passwords to the bottom of the recipe, and occasionally send the recipe to my children.”

Competitive Research

Cyber News and Scam Plus - captures existing news sources about fraud and funnels them into the application

LifeLock ID - Financial account monitoring. Requires you to sign in to your financial accounts inside the application

Nomorobo and Scam Shield - Blocks known robocall sources. Limited, as new numbers are continually generated

Flimflam - Educates the user to current frauds and suggests strategies to avoid becoming a victim.

Flimflam follows an educational model to increase your knowledge of the risks and more become self-sufficient. The risks are evolving, good knowledge of fraudulent methods will help you avoid the latest challenges.

Persona

Hattie, 71 years old. Mobile phone user, banks, and shops online.

Experience Map

Following Hattie, through a time she nearly lost money to the Grandparent Scam

“After getting so many spam phone calls I tried blocking all unknown callers on my phone. Then I got stuck waiting forever in the parking lot because the tow truck driver couldn’t reach me because his phone number was automatically blocked.”

A larger screen

The average age of my interview subject was 77 years old. All my subjects use mobile phones but, have self-imposed limits on their mobile phone use and prefer to make sensitive transactions on a larger screen such as a tablet or desktop which are easier for them to view. Research has found some older users utilize more flat finger surface, generally not using the tip of the finger, which is easier to manipulate on the larger iPad.

 “It’s difficult for me to see on the phone, I don’t shop on it” 

“I do transactions on the big screen, I only use my phone for research” 

Based on this feedback I decided to build my application primarily for the iPad to accommodate my user’s preference for a larger screen.

Task Flow Analysis

Concept Sketching and Iteration

Round 2 iteration

Mid-Fi Wireframing

Using the concept sketching iterations as a guide, greyscale wireframes were built in Figma

Prototype and Testing

Building on the task flow analysis and concept sketching a grayscale prototype was developed and prepared for user testing. A testing script was designed for 5 users to perform 5 different tasks and results of each were recorded. The test results and user comments were then compiled to update and improve the prototype for the next round of testing. There were 3 rounds of testing

User Testing Insights

Users felt the shapes of the buttons did not follow typical conventions, needed guidance on the priority of tasks

Action Taken (revisions)

Improved hierarchy, Revised button shapes, Re-designed priority of tasks

3 Testing Rounds

Design Prioritization

After 3 rounds of testing with 15 users, The user feedback provided a list of design change priorities which are charted here to determine the ease of implementation and level of impact of each change to be implemented.

New Task Flow

The user testing provided valuable information about what the user expected in decoding a suspicious message. I used this information to revise my task flow which informed my next stage of design changes.

Updated UI Inspiration

My testing showed that my users struggled to decide which application functions were most important. I used this feedback to make an additional study of UI designs to improve the hierarchy of my design iterations.

Evolution of Hi-Fidelity Design

At the end of user testing, all of the designed tasks were achieved without difficulty. Some users still demonstrated hesitancy in making choices. There was room for improvement in the UI design.

This version demonstrated that color and layering helped create an improved focus on the “I need advice now” button.

The final high-fidelity version is built on the use of color and layering to produce the desired result. Here, the dark color and “read 1st” (upper left) position of the “fraud help” button. Plus the use of photography to visually label the button options created both clarity and separation of function.

Design System

The earthy, peaceful color palette and friendly typeface contrast positively with the majority of anti-fraud products.
The goal is to be more of a partner in finding solutions and not too alarming. Flimflam is designed to become an established brand in its category.

Let’s follow our Persona “Hattie” she wants to use the Flimflam application to decipher a message and then learn more through the video library of Scam University.

High-Fidelity Design

Hattie has received a suspicious message offering a free gift from an unknown number. Hattie consults the Flimflam app to help her decode the text message by tapping on the “Is this message Fraud?” button.

Next, Hattie arrives at the decode quiz page, which asks her to respond to a few questions related to her message

After answering “No” to 4 questions, the application delivers a recommendation for Hattie.

Flimflam tells Hattie her message is likely fraudulent and that she should delete the message. The application then prompts here to view a video explaining to her how to delete and block the text message from her phone.

Hattie, watches the video and learns how to block and delete messages. Then she closes the video window.

On the enrollment page of the Scam University video library, Hattie provides her name, email and password, then taps the enroll button.

Now, on the Scam University page, Hattie is invited to view the list of videos.

Hattie scrolls through the available videos, and watches one that teaches her about Identity theft.

View the Figma prototype here

Marketing Website

Hattie was searching for a solution to the frustrating number of fraudulent phone calls, emails, and texts that she was receiving. Her google search brought up a number of products that promised to monitor her accounts for fraudulent behavior but didn’t give her much information about what she could do to avoid the problems in the first place until she found the Flimflame site.

Into the Future

Using YouTube to help Flimflam’s user base make the best use of the application and get direct input from users. This valuable user data will be folded into the design flow as I develop updates and product improvements. Possible YouTube content could be sponsored user reviews, guided instructions, and introducing new features.