Product Designer
UX Case Study
Accessibility | UX Research | Prototyping | Wireframing | User Interface | Usability Testing
Role: Product Designer/UX Researcher
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Industries: Education Technology, Government
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Product: Mobile app prototype
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Target Audience: Seniors living in the U.S. age 65+ who use a smartphone or are interested in using a smartphone
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Project Time: 6 months
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2024
I frequently hear stories about senior citizens falling for scams. It seems to be common knowledge that seniors are one of the most vulnerable populations to fall for scams. Stories such as receiving an email urgently asking for money because a friend or family member is in trouble, and observing that seniors get left out in much of the tech world, inspired me to look into this.​
Why are seniors so vulnerable to scams
and fraud? And why are they targeted?
Secondary Research
​Seniors are one of the top groups of people to be scammed. They lose the most money to scams each year. Americans over age 65 lost $1.7B to fraud in 2023, according to Aura.
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Slowed cognitive function, slowed or impaired body function (including vision and hearing), less tech savviness, loneliness and isolation all contribute to seniors being more vulnerable
to scams. Scammers know this and use it to their advantage.
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​Top scams targeting seniors:​​
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Government impersonation
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Sweepstakes/lottery scams
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Robocalls/phone scams
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Computer/tech support scams
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Grandparent scams
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Healthcare/Medicare/insurance fraud
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Financial exploitation
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Email/phishing
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Funeral/cemetery
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Romance scams
How might we help seniors be less vulnerable to scams and fraud?
Interviews
To better understand why seniors are more vulnerable to scams, and to hear directly from them about their thoughts and experiences, I conducted user interviews.
Initially, I screened people by these criteria:
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Age (65+)
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Lives in the U.S. (because the data are variable in other countries)
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Has access to Google Hangouts or Zoom
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Is able to meet within a given timeframe​
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I recruited seven interviewees.
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Research goals:
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Discover how knowledgeable seniors are of scams (tactics, information, who to contact).
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Understand why seniors are amongst the most vulnerable populations to fall for scams.
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Understand seniors’ struggle with technology.
Interview Results
What they all had in common was their concern and anxiety about scams targeting seniors. All had an emotional reaction to how awful it is, feelings of injustice and “How could they steal money from us, especially since many of us live on a fixed income?!” All had stories to share, such as online shopping scams and fraudulent phone calls.​
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Interviewees have no problem going to the police or calling their bank, but a story was shared about a friend who was scammed out of some money, but never went to the police because she felt stupid. She didn’t call her bank and never recovered the money. Had she known what to do and who to talk to right after she realized the scam, she may have been able to recover that money.​
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Common Resources
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Some rely on listening to guest speakers at ADRC (Aging and Disabilities Resource Centers) bingo events, some rely on printed publications/newsletters, some watch the news, and some read news online and/or actively look for information about scams online, especially after hearing of someone else being scammed.​
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​​​The interviewees had widely varying degrees of tech savviness; from a user of many devices and applications who is interested in tech, used tech in her career, and even learned some computer programming; to a person who has never used tech and doesn’t own a tech device, and does not feel like she needs to learn how to use tech.​
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An important common theme amongst participants who use technology (5 out of 7) is that they prefer using a smartphone or other mobile device (such as iPad mini) because they're easier to use, less complex, and more convenient than a laptop or desktop. Participants have observed that other seniors prefer smartphones. Some are intimidated by laptops and desktops, and maybe worry that they will “press the wrong button.”
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I was surprised by this outcome. Although I approached these interviews trying not to make assumptions, I assumed seniors would prefer the larger laptop or desktop screens.​
I was curious about that surprising outcome, so I decided to look into it further by doing more online secondary research.
Follow-Up Secondary Research
According to California Mobility, smartphones have become the most popular tech device among seniors in the U.S. Pew Research shows that the purchase of tech devices and use of social media has increased significantly from 2012 to 2021, and continues to grow.
​Smartphones are purchased by seniors much more often than other devices. Laptops are second. Seniors aged 65+ who own smartphones went from 13% in 2012 to 61% in 2021.
In 2024, that number is creeping closer to 80%.​​​​
Competitive Analysis
Competitive analysis showed me that there are a few government or third-party websites (USA.gov, Federal Trade Commission, AARP) that have a section with scam information and reporting. Some have pretty good information, but many seniors don't use these sites because they find them complicated, and they have to dig specifically for scam information since these sites have many different resources.
I did not find a mobile app dedicated to scam information. Of my interviewees, those who use technology prefer their smartphone.
My assumption: There isn’t enough awareness of a need; therefore, not enough resources are dedicated to building a mobile app.
Personas
​Based on the information I gathered, I created an affinity cluster, which I used to create two empathy maps.
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The empathy maps helped me come up with two personas. They both ended up being women since most of my interviewees were women, and from my second screener, women generally had higher concern about scams. Women in the U.S. live longer, so there just are more senior women. However, I want to keep in mind through the whole process that men are equally included in my audience.
Problem Statement 1​
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Seniors who feel comfortable using technology need a convenient way to get up-to-date information about scams (tactics, how to deal with scams, who to contact). Because scammers get trickier, it’s hard to keep up with their tactics, and seniors worry about
trusting their information with technology.
Problem Statement 2​
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Seniors who do not feel comfortable using technology need access to up-to-date scam information in an organized, easy-to-understand manner that offers the option to view info offline. They feel intimidated by technology, but realize they need to learn in order to interact with today’s world.
User Stories
I came up with 20 Scrum user stories to break down the solution into functionalities to be designed and built. Then I categorized them by priority. This gave me a more holistic view of the problem.
Information Architecture
There was an opportunity to come up with a mobile app that is a central hub for scam information, and is well-organized and simple to use.
Seniors want:
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To be informed
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To know what scams sound like
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To know who to contact and what to do if they suspect a scam
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Organized information
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To use smartphones over other devices
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To stay relevant in today’s world
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Easy-to-use tech
Using SMART as a base, I came up with 7 user scenarios based on the user stories. These helped me come up with an information architecture for a mobile app.
Original IA
User Flows
The user scenarios and information architecture helped me come up with user flows,
which helped me create wireframes. The user flows are based on 6 of the 7 user stories. After consulting with a design manager, 1 was taken off as it didn't provide as much value for a minimum viable product.
Wireframes
This app has two main purposes:
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To provide seniors with information about scams.
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To provide information on what to do if they suspect a scam.
A larger view of wireframes is in the Wireframes Updates section, to show what was changed based on testing.
Tree Testing
​To make sure my information architecture made sense, I did some tree testing. I sent out another screener with the same criteria as the first screener, except I added that the user needs to use a smartphone or is interested in using a smartphone. I ended up with six participants. Some were from before and some were new. I used Optimal Workshop to conduct the tree testing.
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Tree Testing Goals:
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To see how easily users can understand/navigate the IA to find videos/podcasts.
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To see if users can easily find where to go for help when faced with a scam.
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Task 1​
Someone called you claiming to be a federal government representative. They said you still owed money for taxes and you need to pay immediately, otherwise there would be a warrant out for your arrest. You gave them your credit card information. Now you think it was a trick. Where in the app would you go to find out who to call or what to do?​
First task test results—not terrible, but could be better:
The “Do’s & Don’ts” section was chosen by a couple of participants as the first click. Maybe I need to move that section or rename it.
Task 2
You want to watch and listen to information about scams. Where in the app could you watch and listen to people talk about scams?
Second task test results—The second task had a pretty high failure rate. “Videos” is the name of the destination folder, but the parent folder to that is “Resources,” which also contains latest news, articles, websites, helpful contacts, and helpful products. Maybe it needs to be renamed.
The most common incorrect first click was “Do’s & Don’ts,” which is another reason I may need to move that, maybe under the same parent folder. Others chose “I suspect a scam,” “How aware are you? (test knowledge)” (another reason to rename that), and even “Scam map,” which I’m not sure is useful to keep. It’s not a minimum viable product.
Results
I was surprised at the high failure rate, especially for the second task. I didn’t think participants would confuse “I suspect a scam (get help)” with “Resources (news, articles, videos, sites…).” Some clicked on “Do’s & Don’ts,” which was a separate folder from Resources, but maybe should instead be a child folder under Resources. I also need to rename the knowledge test, “How aware are you?” Some chose that to find a video.
Concept testing will give me a deeper understanding of the tree testing results, and give me a better idea of how the information architecture should be organized.
Concept Testing
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Participants were already giving input before I asked questions, so I took notes.
Let’s talk about these first three categories. How would you like to see them arranged or grouped?
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If you think you’ve been scammed and want contact information, and to know what to do for your specific situation, where on the app would you go?
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I suspect a scam (get help)
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Suspect a scam? (Tell me more so I can help.)
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Something else
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A scam map is a visual map with pin drops, and each pin drop shows where a scam happened and what type of scam it was. How useful is something like this to you/How much does it matter to you? Please rate on a scale from 1 to 7, with 1 being not at all to
7 being very useful/matters a lot.
1 2 3 4 5 6 7
Not useful at all/ Very useful/
Doesn’t matter at all Matters a lot
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Is there anything else you’d like to see added, improved, moved, removed?
Notes Summary and Insights
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All but one person remarked that Do’s and Don’ts should be under Resources. According to the tree testing, this was a common incorrect category people were clicking on.
More people thought it made sense to rename “I suspect a scam (get help)” to “Suspect a scam? (Tell me more so I can help.).” There were a couple of other label suggestions, like “Think you’re being scammed?” and “Is this a scam?”
Overall, the scam map didn’t seem very useful. A great suggestion from a participant was, instead of having a scam map, have a list of scams (from most to least relevant) with videos and articles available for that scam.💡
An additional suggestion was to rename “Resources” to “Library” or “Resource center” because the participant thought “Resources” meant it contained everything—it’s too vague.
“Latest news” was its own section, which is unnecessary. It would be intuitive to find a video about the latest scam news under “Videos.” The latest video can be displayed at
the top and doesn’t need to be named “Latest news.”
Wireframes Updates
I simplified the folder structure of the homepage so there are three choices:
Before
After
“I suspect a scam” was renamed to “Suspect a scam?” making it more obvious where to get help. The subtext, “Tell me more so I can help” was too wordy. It needed to be clear that a user would tap this button if they thought they were scammed. So the new subtext is “Get help here.”
“Resources” now contains “Do’s & Don’ts,” “Websites” was moved under the newly named “Contacts,” “Videos” contains the “Latest News” as the top video since they are ordered by date. “Types of scams” was added under because it was a key category that was missing. I didn’t rename “Resources” because I thought the new layout would solve that problem.
Originally, I thought breadcrumbs would be more helpful to a population that needs more support with tech, but it was instead too busy visually for a mobile screen and sometimes added confusion. I replaced the breadcrumbs at the top with a back arrow.
Before
After
The contacts list is a feature people want to see in case they want to ask questions or visit a website for certain information and events. When one is chosen, it gives more detail. Users can also save their own contacts:
Before
After
I restructured the Videos layout. Latest scam news will obviously be the first Video, instead of being in its own category. The UI is simpler, and just the necessary information is displayed when scrolling through videos. When a video is chosen, more details are shown:
Before
After
Colors & Typeface
Mood: Friendly, calm, and a little cheerful to remove some anxiety around the subject of scams, yet not forgetting that this is an official app about scams.
Taking vision-impaired users into consideration, I chose high-contrast colors, especially since seniors are more likely to be vision-impaired than younger populations.
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After doing some research online, I chose a blue to be my main color because it’s the easiest one for aging eyes to identify. It also evokes calmness. Orange as an accent color (mostly for tap states) makes it slightly cheerful and is less alarming than red.
Roboto is widely used for its readability and clean look, like Helvetica, but has that more modern, friendlier look to it. I didn't want this app to be exclusively for Android or exclusively for Apple, so Roboto is a great choice. Material Design says it's the best universal choice for mobile apps.
Usability Testing
I conducted another moderated test with 6 participants. The first participant was in person, and was my pilot tester. The other 5 were conducted remotely. Some were from before, some were new.
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BallPark was the main tool used for testing and gathering answers. It has different templates, such as usability testing templates, and allows the question to float next to the prototype so it is always visible to the user. On a mobile phone, the task floats over the prototype, but can be hidden. Some participants found that disruptive, so chose to use a laptop or tablet instead.
This was acceptable because the prototype is seen as a mobile phone screen.
Pilot Testing
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The pilot test helped me figure out the order of pages in BallPark. Originally, I had all
the questions at the end, after the tasks. The pilot tester told me he had a hard time remembering what he did 3 tasks ago, so I moved each question to after its task, with
the open-ended question at the end, before the Thank you page.
He wondered why he couldn’t fill out forms in the prototype. On the explanation page,
I mentioned that since this is a prototype, not all buttons will work. I needed to add that
the forms fields wouldn't work.
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We also found a couple of bugs in my Figma prototype I needed to fix.
Usability Testing Main Objectives
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Test the efficiency of finding and sharing articles and videos.
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Understand user satisfaction with the process of answering questions to get information if they suspect a scam.
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Test the effectiveness of the AI-assisted "Suspect a scam?" menu button. (Can a user find this easily if they suspect a scam? Would they get it confused with other choices?)
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Understand user satisfaction with the overall experience of using the app.
I asked each participant to read the task out loud, and verbalize and/or show their screen while testing the prototype.
Usability Testing Results and Insights
BallPark gathered each participant’s data: answers to my questions, percentage of misclicks for each task, how long that task took, and device used.
Question 1: How helpful or unhelpful do you think a list of Do’s & Don’ts is?
I wanted to make sure the “Do’s & Don’ts” section wasn’t just a filler. Participants all answered that it’s extremely helpful, and two answered that it’s somewhat helpful.
Click/Tap results showed that participants didn’t easily find Do’s & Don’ts. If we go back a step to the parent folder (homepage), participants chose “Suspect a scam?” first after realizing that wasn’t where they meant to go. According to my study, those using a smartphone incorrectly chose “Suspect a scam?” first. It seems like users choose the first button to find the common information. Maybe “Resource center” should be first since it will get used the most. 💡
Question 2: How helpful or unhelpful do you think a list of Do’s & Don’ts is?
Participants thought the task was easy, but any difficulty finding it was because the task was too long, and therefore confusing. I could have left out step 4. Too many steps made the experience artificial. So there was confusion and clicking/tapping on incorrect buttons.
Question 3: How easy or difficult was it to figure out where to go if you suspect a scam?
Participants found the task to be easy.
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Question 4: How would you make the experience better?
One participant gave feedback that there was a list of scams when you go to “Resource center” > “Types of scams,” and also when you go to “Suspect a scam?”
The list under Suspect a scam is for a user to choose the type of scam they think they experienced.
Others also initially went to the list under “Resource center,” until they figured out the difference. Maybe the list under “Suspect a scam?” should be a dropdown. Again, maybe it would be helpful to list Resources first.
Participants found the app generally easy to navigate.
More Iteration & Testing
I made a few design adjustments, moved the “Resource center” button to be first on the homepage, and changed the scam list under “Suspect a scam?” to be an alphabetized dropdown. The other list needs all scams to be visible and tappable, and are in order of the ones victims fall for most to least.
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I wanted more confirmation on my rearrangement of buttons on the homepage. So I sent the Figma prototype to my pilot tester to test on his smartphone. I told him my purpose was to see how good the flow was. “Find a list of scams and read about one.”
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It didn’t seem like he noticed I switched the first two buttons, “Resource center” and “Suspect a scam?” Without thinking twice, he correctly chose Resource center, now the first choice.
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I asked him to get help if he thinks he’s been scammed. He noticed the dropdown change.
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After I revealed that I switched the first two buttons, I asked him if he liked this version or the previous version better. He thought the new version was for sure more intuitive.
Before
After
Before
After
AI-assisted questions for “Suspect a scam?”
Here is the list under Resource Center > Types of scams, where a scam can be chosen
to read about or watch a related video:
Lessons Learned
A common thing designers struggle with is moving on. I really wanted a deep understanding of everything I was doing, especially during the research phase since it was less familiar to me. Because I took the time to really understand the research phase, I feel much more confident about it.
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I didn't have much time for card sorting, but looking back, I think it would have actually saved time. One of the most challenging parts was coming up with the right information architecture, especially after the high failure rate of the tree testing.
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After improving the design as a result of the BallPark usability testing, if I had more time,
I would have run the test again on new participants who have never seen the app before. The small pilot test I ran after improving the design was a helpful, next-best solution.
One participant commented, “It would be great to have a section for the viewer's input so we can contribute our experiences.” This is an idea I may want to explore. 💡
Outcomes
Every project is a learning experience, and this entire process was no exception.
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I learned a lot about seniors’ experience with scams, scam information, and their wants
and needs. I also learned about their limitations with technology and why, their frustrations with tech, why or why not they use certain devices, and what they expect from using those devices.
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One of the most important take-aways from this project is how challenging it is designing something from scratch, as a team of one (besides consulting with a product design manager and a front-end developer), for a population with generally lower tech knowledge and higher accessibility needs. When you work on a project mostly alone, you must be very good at researching and getting information from your participants, as well as reaching out for help. I thrive in a collaborative environment, so this was a new challenge which I learned a lot from.
Flexibility and adaptability through the whole process is crucial. I designed an app that is easy to use, makes sense, and fulfills seniors’ wants and needs about scam information.