POPI

This work affects the entire business and is very difficult. The front-end design comprises a very small percentage of the work needed. The Superbalist product and engineering teams did an excellent job at pulling everything together to ensure we are compliant with the act — and treat our customers with openness and respect.

I did the conceptual design for this work, to help the team see how certain aspects of the flows would roll out. The scope changed significantly as we unpacked the integration requirements. 

The complexity of the data sources means that we had to design numerous fallback options. I did the conceptual design and as the head of UX I oversee the research, detailed design and implementation.

Privacy & detail

It's really gratifying to share my experiences while designing in these case studies.

I love my job.

As a human centred designer it is important that I protect the privacy of the people I work with. I also have a responsibility to keep the competitive details — competitive.

Any lack of detail in the solution are due to these reasons and not in the quality of the work.

Progress

As psychologist Daniel Kahneman explains in his book Thinking, Fast and Slow, people tend to judge their overall experience of an event, service, or product based on the most intense feelings they encountered—whether those feelings are positive or negative.

Great off-boarding takes advantage of this fact by leaving a lasting positive impression instead of relying on guilt or coercion to retain customers.

Designing for emotion

I like mapping the inherent emotion someone would feel when they complete a task. My goal is to design to improve the situation. If someone is hopping mad, I consider it a good outcome if they feel annoyed when completing a task. I made it better.

Skills used

Interaction design/ design leadership

Team

• I did the concepts & desk research
• Tenaya is doing the detailed UX & UI design
• Jacques is doing the validation & usability testing
• All the engineering teams are involved
• All the product managers are involved

I consider it a success if I made the person on the other side of the glass feel better.

Value proposition

Superbalist, as a brand, focuses on enabling our customers

To give our customers the tools to live their lives in the way they choose

We’re using this exact approach for our off-boarding experience

Principles

• Off boarding should be at least as easy as subscribing/ signing up
• Be clear - use plain language to explain what happens
• Be informative - provide details on what happens behind the scenes
• Accurate system status at all time

Analysis

• Competitor analysis looks at local + global
• This entire study looks at comparative flows, putting it in the modal competitor analysis category
• Businesses that use retail, software as a service, telecom + entertainment as a revenue generator
• I looked at about 20 businesses across sectors and countries
• I really liked Medium and took a lot from their approach

Findings

• People delete profiles from companies with dodgy social media policies
• Huge frustration with auto-renewal and payment (SAAS) - they use “pause accounts”
• Deleting a profile for eCom not a common approach
  

We keep this in mind for every step in the flow. People are so used to companies scrweing them around that they assume the worst. So we clearly communicate why we need to make things more difficult if we have to because of technical reasons.

Key concepts

Reference numbers

All communication around POPI should save a reference number. Reference numbers should be clearly marked in customer comms and should allow customer support to recall the relevant records 

Pause profile

A profile goes into a pause state when there are legal reasons that prevents us from immediately deleting a profile.

We set up a date, put it in a pause state, email the customer 2 days before the profile is finally deleted

Delete profile

When we remove all profile information, barring those relating to invoices that we have to keep for 7 years. We send a reference number

Further reading

• Offboarding - the way to say goodbye to your users
• Tumblr’s delete account confirmation modal
• The art of letting go: 6 ways to improve the UX of your off boarding experience
  
• 10 cancellation flow examples and why they work
  
• Create an off boarding flow that improves retention
• Offboarding: How and How not to end relationships with users