EmmanuelCuevas.

Challenge

Build a mobile application that allows users to register their fingerprints into the system. The fingerprints are a new method to authenticate the clients to Telcel. This solution allows the clients to authorize, check movements, and change plans or payment methods with the company without showing any identification. It also helps the Client Executives (CE) to reduce the time they solve the problem or necessity from the client.

My role

I led this project’s Product Design, User Experience, and User Interface. I also received feedback from other designers to improve and get other perspectives on the design.

What is Fingerprint?

Fingerprint is a mobile application allowing the Client to achieve two goals. The first one is to enroll its fingerprints into the system in a fluid and easy way and, secondly, authenticate itself without needing physical identification and approve changes and purchases into its account.

Discovery Phase

To give an overview of what was happening with Telcel. At that time, AT&T had made significant investments in the country, causing a stir in the industry. At that moment, Telcel had around 16 million users for post-pay plans, so it was and still is the primary telecom provider in Mexico.

Also, I went to the branches to make a research on a field level. I remember sitting at a shop for a couple of hours just taking notes about certain pain points that I noticed. In that visit, I saw people really angry at the counters and others complaining about the same things.

I did tons of interviews with the different stakeholders to identify the personas, the current process for attending a client and define the flows and journeys to enroll a user into fingerprint.

I did a competitive analysis on how biometrics was used on other industries because it was not common to see that in a Telecomm company. This technology was used for financial and governmental processes, and the goal was to authenticate the user so that the services or benefits could be used.

With the first round of iterations, creating the happy path for this system was enlightening. First, KPIs like time of attention and information clearness were important. So one groundbreaker in the project was the use of requests sent from a terminal to avoid losing time in grabbing the tablet, typing the information, and starting the process. Additionally, showing precise information on the screen, the addition of a success message, and proof sent to the User by SMS validated the confidentiality of the system.

How does it work?

1. The Client decides to enroll in the program, and the Client Advocate uses a fingerprint reader connected to the tablet to save two fingerprints into the system.
2. The App shows a percentage of efficiency in gathering the minutiae of the fingerprint. Once the quality of the sample is 100%, the App shows a success message to the Client.
3. The Client Advocate authenticates the Client by its fingerprint.

Takeaways

1. The process of creating multiple applications and setting up an app factory, from strategy creation to execution, was a valuable lesson for me. It helped me establish standards and ensure their adherence throughout the entire effort.
2. How to establish a team and cultivate a supportive atmosphere that facilitates the achievement of our objectives.
3. The creation of a Design System Language that supported all the applications within the App Factory and the creation of a framework to reduce the time from development to production.