I designed a biometric security experience for clinical patient identification in sub-saharan Africa.
Making the project extra challenging were requirements that:
1 The application could not use any language
2 The experience was delivered on older Android tablets
Because the local languages in the region of Sub-Saharan Africa where the application was to be deployed are not available as computer translations, there were no languages available that any user spoke or read.
The first challenge was to orient the user to the proper direction to hold the tablet to use for the biometric scan. I tested a lot of different ideas with little children who were too young to read. What I discovered was that when shown a basic ‘smiley face’ image users would orient the face to be smiling at them.
The user could tap the face or wait for a period of time and then auto-advanced to the next screen: choosing face or hand scanning. Touching either hand advances the experience and tells the application which hand indicator to show.
Arrows were used for in application navigation as an over-ride to workflow based navigation after testing showed users understood the intent and function.
Images were created specifically to match a standard display style used in international medical material.
The image instructs the user how to position the tablet for the scan. Adding the zoomed in image increased success by 27%.
When the clinic worker taps the arrow to advance, or waits for the app to auto advance, the hand position indicator was shown.
I tested more than 100 different hand visualizations to find the right one to help users get a successful scan. Interestingly the more anatomically correct and photo realistic the hand was the worse it tested.
The dashed line that makes up the zone indicator changes color to reflect how close or how far the user is from the target scan zone.
When the subjects hand is in the correct zone the dashed line is green and the system displays a 3 second countdown timer.
While the timer is counting down the biometric scan is actually taking place. This was done for 2 reasons: 1 because testing showed that people were more still during the countdown than after it ended or before it started and 2 to account for older hardware with lower quality cameras and slower processors.
During testing users reported very positive reactions to the countdown timer. Although entirely un-necessary in terms of the biometric scan success, the countdown provided several dimensions of lift to the overall experience.
At the end of the countdown a progress indicator is displayed. In reality the application is processing the biometric security rules to confirm a biometric match. This is done to give the device more processing time without negatively impacting the user experience with a wait state.
If the capture is successful the user gets a happy face confirmation. When tested this was more universally understood as meaning ‘good’ then other images that had inconsistent cultural and social meanings such as checkmarks.