ExitPass
I designed a ‘cheerful celebration of life’ iOS app for ExitPass, which lets users transfer their passwords to a loved one securely after the user passes away
Product Design Responsibilities
Themes
Product design, visual design,
interaction design
Tools
Adobe XD, Adobe Illustrator,
and Adobe Photoshop,
Team
The team consisted of myself and Brandon Simon (software engineer).
Timeline
This project took place
April 2021 -May 2021
Introduction
The female founder explained that after receiving a cancer diagnosis at age 30, it was a real wake up call to how “forever young” is just lyrics from a hit song. The founder’s mother repeatedly asked with compassion about what would happen with online bank accounts and other important logins in the event of passing. The founder resisted answering such questions despite the diagnosis. While treatments were successful, as the years passed, the answer remained the same.
The goal of ExitPass is to help people create digital wills where their digital assets and passwords can be given to ta trusted person only upon passing away. This way, their wishes can be carried out across social networks, subscriptions, and other financial assets. This would give people an opportunity to also specify if they want their social networks memorialized, deleted, or left alone after passing away.
The Creation of a Digital Will
The primary persona for ExitPass is a planner who is actively creating a digital will. The digital will needs to do (1) inventory digital assets, (2) specify wishes, (3) integrate password sharing (4) establish a digital will executor at the bare minimum.
Digital Will Implementation
The digital will executor is the person responsible for accessing accounts and passwords of the deceased person to carry out their wishes, as indicated in the digital will. They need to (1) upload death certificate & (2) watch educational videos on their role.
Goal
How do we make digital wills
appealing to millennials?
Minimum Viable Product
The ideas for features was quite extensive, as in the future, there could be other
complementary products working together. For the minimum viable product,
the core features were synthesized into the absolute essentials for value proposition.
Create Digital Will
The digital will would need to capture identifiable info, assets, and login info.
Password Integration
The planner would need to connect their password manager with accounts.
Recipient Education
Digital will executors would need to basic information for their role.
Death Documentation
The death certificate would need to be uploaded to grant access.
User Flow
User Personas
Competitive Landscape
In looking into the current marketplace, I looked at complementary products, indirect competitors, and direct competitors to get a feel for the competitive landscape. There are direct competitors who provide wills at different price points.
I noticed that many life insurance companies choose blue as their primary color scheme. Among password managers, I saw color schemes featuring: black, blue, and red. In looking at estate planning attorneys, I saw lots of many shades of gray—and black for a serious vibe.
WillWishes
At the bottom of the rankings is WillWishes, it only has 1 review from a user that succinctly reads, “It didn’t work.” There are very few apps dedicated to will creation in the app store. This is 1 of 3 that I found in my initial searches. There’s clearly room for improvement. It surprisingly humorous to read.
Will 2 Click
With a rating bordering on 5 stars, from 16 reviewers, Will2Click certainly is a step up. While the typography, patterns, and imagery is questionable at times, it does seem to effectively help users establish beneficiaries, items, and core will components for users.
Fabric
The front runner, without a doubt, in popularity, reviews, and design aesthetic is Fabric. The company does both life insurance and digital wills. It’s a well-funded startup with complementary products and free digital wills that can be created quickly. It’s beautifully designed for sure.
Starting the design
Digital Wireframes
Low-fidelity prototype
Usability studies
Digital Wireframes
This sequence of screens shows the progression
that a planner would take to add a digital asset to their account.
Low Fidelity Prototype
With wireframes complete, I was able to create a low fidelity prototype to begin to capture how the interaction might take place as users move from screen to screen to add a digital asset to their account.
Usability Test: Parameters
Study Type
Unmoderated usability test to measure time on task and error rate.
Location
The test took place in the United States, remotely, using UsabilityHub.
Participants
Females, between 25-35, college graduates in the United States
Length
This navigation test took place in 3-5 minutes per user.
Design Revisions
The initial button to add an account is a circle with a plus symbol on it.
Since it overlays other elements, users at first were confused as to where to click.
Before
The plus button, with the plus symbol, was the initial version of the digital wireframe.
After
The add account button with text
improved clarity and time on task.
Before
Some users were clicking on their profile instead of the add account button. This was increasing time on task, 27 seconds to make the first click.
After
The add account button was pushed to the top
with added white space for emphasis and visibility. This decreased time on task.
Visualizing App Styles
This departure from the mundane also included the use of tasteful animations to sprinkle in a sense of playful whimsy. The animations were created to serve practical purposes such as moving from tab to tab in the navigation or to make it clear where to go next.
We thought about imagery that would create joy, and unicorns certainly came to mind. Design wise it was going to be a clearly different mood and energy wise from the stuffy, formal, rigid, protective vibes of attorneys and security companies. This playful vibe was deliberately chosen to attract a different segment of the marketplace who wasn’t drawn to traditional messages associated with death and obligations.
My design experiments began with the use of different color schemes, font pairings, and visuals to get a better understanding as to whether the brand values were being perceived through the visual design of the iOS app.
Design Preference Experiment
To create a user experience that’s far removed from traditional approaches to digital wills: serious, stuffy, and sad. The pendulum switched to vibrant, spirited, choice driven approach to transferring digital assets.
Whimsical
The unicorn embodies whimsy, magical, and unexpected which leans nicely into creating a pleasant surprise.
Symbolic
Sunsets are glorious, vivid, and splendorous; it is in alignment with “going out in a blaze of glory. Sunsets precede the darkness of the night too.
Illustrations
The illustrations help represent the necessity of acknowledging essential transfer of information from planner to recipient.
In a design preference usability test, 60% of users preferred the sunset design.
I put these color variations to the test with users, on UserTesting.com, to test the value proposition in conjunction with the visual design to confirm alignment between brand values and visual design. 60% of users preferred the red sunset design over the other design variations.
Atomic Design
Given that there were only 14 days to create the first iteration of the minimum viable product, I prioritized key concepts from Atomic Design to build out reusable elements to establish a design system that would be faster to implement.
Color Palette
To maximize appeal of the digital will, the color scheme needed to embody a zest for life that was grounded in being responsible and proactive about final wishes for digital assets. In the spirit of celebrating life in all its beauty and color, the color scheme went in the direction of a rainbow of colors.
The color psychology borrowed different attributes from each color. Passionate from red, responsible from blue, energetic from orange, happy from yellow, balance from green, inspirational from purple. Each color was meant to change the negative associations and resistance associated with estate planning and the inevitable demise everyone faces.
Typography
The typography needed to be baby-boomer friendly, in the event of a parent acting as a recipient of a digital will. The typography also needed to appeal to the planners sense of ease and familiarity of modern apps. Sans serif fonts fit the bill with modernity, clarity, and responsible vibes to it. For a bit of whimsy, a playful font was incorporated too.
Design Atoms
My goal with the design was to deliver on a celebration of life outlook. I wanted the design to communicate joy, energy, experiences, a zest for life. A key idea to designing for happiness is to incorporate a delightful surprise, so I created an amusing button hover effect.
Molecules
In the spirit of atomic design, the molecules are elements comprised of smaller reusable atoms.
Below you can see the different types of molecules that were created to help build out the app.
In App Form Field
This reusable element allows users to input key information on digital assets.
Digital Asset Login
Most digital assets are password protected, this helps share the login.
Asset Categories
Online assets can be located speedily by jumping into a given category.
App Navigation
The most important places within the app are found in under 2 clicks.
Templates
Templates, within atomic design, allow for standards to be established for text, images, layout, so that there is consistency across the app pages.
Mockups
With the established guidelines from the templates, it became easier to design pages that implemented the atoms and molecules that preceded this design stage. Buttons act like calls to action to highlight key next steps.
High Fidelity Prototype
Through the mockups, it is possible see how the user would add a digital asset to their account. With 1 click per screen, it simplifies the navigation quite nicely. The prominent buttons make it easy to tap also.
User Flow
The user flow reflects the minimum viable product to
complete 2 core features per user persona.
Results
ExitPass morphed into a full-fledge iOS device fit for the app store. Across 52 screens, there were designs for app store, onboarding, planner features, recipient features to help bring to the marketplace a distinct offering for digital will creation tool.
Through conducting A/B testing, we validated the right typography to be accessible and legible for baby boomer digital will executors; the accessibility adjustments in color and typography improved. the click stream and ease of use by 15%.
After I analyzed user feedback from the prototype test which consisted of 40 users; it was determined that the leading password manager of LassPass, was the password tool to integrate into ExitPass to keep passwords & permissions current and accurate.
