Resident's Served
~700,000
Connected Services
14
MySurrey Account @ City of Surrey
Helping City of Surrey residents securely create accounts, sign in, and manage their multi-step interactions with the City.
Role
Usability testing, user interface design, prototyping
Year
2017
Tools
Sketch, Zeplin, InvisionApp
PROBLEM
Many online services are multi-stepped processes with time in between; without an account, residents can lose track of progress and context.
Many of the services that the City of Surrey digitized (including Building Permits) required the resident to go back-and-forth with clerks to complete the workflow. This back-and-forth could mean days or weeks in between interactions. I was tasked with creating a secure, easy-to-use, and manage account service so residents could track any interaction they had with the City's online services.
PROCESS
Analyzed common account creation flows and collaborated with IT to understand security requirements, and aligned with the design team.
I documented common account creation flows from other services, including Amazon, Facebook, and Google. This helped me understand common patterns residents would expect and how we can tweak the flow to ensure it's simple and intuitive for any user of any age or familiarity with technology. I used Sketch to document my research and design the initial wireframes and flows, working closely with my design team to ensure alignment and consistency.
aCCESSIBILITY
Our users (the residents) are a diverse group with differing comfort with technology, written English, and of different ages and accessibility needs.
During the design process, I had to ensure that our solution was accessible to every City resident, regardless of age, English fluency, or if they had any other impairment, making using this service difficult. I referenced WCAG guidelines and shared my findings with the broader team to make sure colours were accessible, button sizes met the minimum standard, and the language we used was readable and understandable to ESL (English as a Second Language) speakers as well.
CONSTRAINTS
With 14 unique online services, the MySurrey Account needed to display them consistently.
The key value added with creating a MySurrey Account is being able to view the details of an interaction with an online service. This meant viewing any updates (the status) and the original submission. Because all 14 online services are unique, I audited each service and worked with stakeholders and the project designer to understand what the key information would be to display that we could standardize. Each card in the details page is consistently displayed for each service, with minor adjustments made to align wording, images, and details with the specific service.
OUTCOMES
Released an account creation and management service, validated key flows through usability testing.
Because we couldn't conduct user research remotely or see analytics, I conducted in-person usability testing at a local library. I set up a booth and encouraged passing visitors to walkthrough the account creation process and provide their feedback. This helped me validate the flow, but also helped me realize the importance of ensuring every page was accessible, specifically the wording we use, as many residents are ESL.
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