Responsibilities
UX Lead
Strategy, Research, Design
DUST Identity
How a new mobile app helped DUST Identity reach 150% of their client booking goals
Role
Employer
Timeframe
Q4 2023 - Q1 2024
My Role
I was the UX Lead on this project, collaborating openly with an Agile team of two mobile developers, a product manager, and an additional UX contractor.
I was responsible for shaping the overall design direction of this project, with an emphasis on finding out how we could make the user’s existing harvesting workflow work intuitively on a mobile device.
Process
DUST’s new mobile harvesting app launched in January 2024, finally allowing clients to scan tags and enter item details from a mobile device. This allowed DUST’s new (at the time) client base of Sports franchises to harvest items directly in their locker rooms, storage facilities, or on the road – a vast improvement to collecting items around a laptop or desktop computer. This eliminated a big hurdle for the sales team, allowing them to close several deals that had stalled, resulting DUST reaching 150% of their early 2024 booking goals. In this case study I’ll walk you through the project from start to finish, focusing on my duties and activities as UX Lead.
Summary
Continuous Improvement
Understand the Problem
User Interviews
Define the Problem
Persona Creation
User Flow Creation
User Testing
Product Roadmap Definition
Develop the Solution
Wireframes
Lo-Fi Prototype
Hi-Fi Interface Design
Design System Update
Hi-Fi Prototype
Deliver the Solution
Developer Handoff
QA
Launch
To fully understand this case study, it'll be helpful to know more about DUST Identity.
DUST stands for Diamond Unclonable Security Tag. DUST's main tech offering is a "DUST Sticker", whcih features a sprinkle of diamond dust onto a sticky polymer, making it immovable. When scanned (utilizing a light), this random array of diamonds and their many facets reflect back a light pattern that is crazy unique – like many more times unique than a human fingerprint. This means that if you scan a tag and it pulls up a match in the system, DUST is supremely confident that you are in possession of that specific item.
There are a lot of use cases for DUST. This project took place during a time of transition for DUST, as they moved into the more consumer-friendly space of Sports and Entertainment. The goal was for sports teams to 'tag' game used jerseys, balls, etc. with DUST tags before a game. Those items would then be used in games, and with a corresponding post-game tag, could be proven to be authentic in a way that doesn't exist elsewhere in the market.
Most teams have a process of collecting and storing these jerseys – called 'harvesting'. The crux of the problem in this project was introducing the idea of adding DUST tags to these items, allowing teams to enroll the items in the DUST platform.
Understanding the tech
What is DUST?
Hold Up...
- Any authentication better than visually matching items would be leaps and bounds better than authentication systems currently in place
- The journey of a game-used item – from assignment to a player, through it’s usage, and then ultimately repossession by the team – is not always linear, and varies from team to team, game to game, and player to player.
- Primary monetization of these items would occur through eBay, and therefore a few integrations built into the app would greatly reduce the friction of selling these game-used items
Findings
Understand the Problem
01
As with every project, the team and I needed to fully understand the problem before trying to solve it. I conducted interviews with a few potential clients that had expressed interest in a mobile solution. I wanted to know exactly how they harvested items within their current workflows.
I set up a series of 15-30 minute Zoom calls with equipment staffers for each of these organizations and asked them about their current process of collecting and storing game-used items post-game.
I learned that the two teams had similar processes, but they weren't as similar as we had assumed during some initial ideation. It became clear that we would need to design an extremely simple solution in order to fit seamlessly into different complex workflows.
Initial user Interviews
For the MVP of the app, the Product Lead and I decided that we should focus on designing an experience focused on carrying out a singular workflow – known internally as "harvesting". This would allow the user of the mobile app to accomplish the most important task in the DUST workflow from their mobile device – on their terms, and on their time.
MVP User Flow
Define the Problem
02
DUST already had well-established Personas at the time, but seeing as this would be the company's first real foray into mobile apps (and the fact that these potential clients were so reliant on being untethered from a computer), I thought creating a new persona was in order.
This persona is constantly on the go, needing to be in specific places at specific times in order to do their job. DUST would need to meet them where they were at – not the other way around, which was a common theme in most of DUST's solutions up to that point.
This became one of the driving factors behind the user flow design for our MVP.
New Persona Creation
Develop the Solution
03
During the wireframing phase, it became clear through design reviews and some dot exercises that some of the DUST 'Greatest Hits' features – like showing the location of the scan, editing item details and descriptions, and showing a history of all completed scans on an item wouldn't serve our new 'on the go' user persona. All of these features would still be available on the accompanying web app, but seeing these features sketched out into initial wireframes just made it more clear that we needed to focus on a simple 'harvest only' workflow for the mobile app – at least for our MVP.
How did this process change the design?
I determined that it would be useful to create wireframes and a low-fidelity prototype to get a basic (and clickable) user flow in front of the potential clients and DUST leadership as soon as possible. I created the wireframes in Figma, and then hooked them up to a clickable prototype for sharing internally and externally.
These prototypes were shared with both sports franchises we had included in our initial testing. We also walked through a successful demo at our bi-weekly Product meeting, during which leadership gave the green light to proceed.
Wireframes & Lo-FI Prototype
The Solution
Oh no! A Constraint!
WE interrupt this process to deliver some client feedback
With one mobile developer on board, our options were pretty slim. We could either tell the (potential) client to kick rocks (not advisable), or we could scramble our resources, reduce the scope of the MVP, and pull out a heroic victory that would make our clients swoon.
The Options
The Bad News
When we showed our two potential clients what we were working on, they were psyched! Harvesting items with the workflow we presented in our lo-fi prototype would only add seconds to the equipment personnel's workflow – but could add hundreds to thousands of dollars of monetization per item scanned!
The Good news
Designing the Interface
04
In an effort to save time, rather than revisit the MVP by performing more user interviews, wireframes, and prototypes, we opted instead to do it live.
Our Product Lead and I prioritized features that we absolutely would need for the new, more aggressive MVP.
A few features – like the ability to remove photos after adding them and the ability to remove an item from the queue without first harvesting it – found the cutting room floor. These items were made fast follows for after the launch of the MVP on our product roadmap.
Re-Working the MVP
DUST had traditionally created interfaces designed to work best on larger screens (think factory floor workstations). Therefore, FACET – DUST's Design System – had very little to no mobile-sized components to work with for the new design.
In a delicate dance (and with a new deadline coming quickly), I designed the interface for our approved user experience as I would have designed a fresh new app – using colors, type styles, and themes from the existing Design System – and creating new mobile components on the fly, simultaneously adding them into a new section of the system.
The result were handoff-ready screens that the development team rushed to prepare for launch.
Introducing the design system
Post-Handoff
After the launch of our MVP, the team resumed our continuous improvement roadmap, with emphasis on features that had been tested out, but fell on the cutting room floor due to time.
Using our new clients as testers, we tested out multiple other features on our roadmap. Some were welcome additions (better photo management, the ability to attach a Certificate of Authenticity from a phone), while others fell flat in testing (re-organizing photos felt overkill for the app, editing item details felt more appropriate as a web experience).
The 'Dust Queue' app is still in development today.
Next Steps
We were able to deliver the app to our client just in time for a major sporting event, during which they were able to use the app to successfully harvest 20 game-used items.
This was enough to sign both clients we had been in close communication with throughout the project, as well as a number of additional clients over the next several weeks and months.
This influx of new clients meant DUST surpassed its booking goals for the beginning of 2024 by 150%
It also unlocked a new type of clientele, as well as new mobile possibilities for established clients.
Result
Initial user interviews revealed that even within a single industry, workflows can vary significantly. The team and I had assumed that because both potential clients were sports franchises, that their harvesting workflows would be somewhat similar. This underscored the importance of deisgning flexible solutions, rather than one-size-fits-all solutions.
The UX initiatives in this project had a more obvious impact on the company's bottom line than a typical project at DUST did. This project made it clear that good UX can do a lot for a business.