Our research aimed at exploring the user experience of sharing a digital key in a mobile application and how design can enhance the feeling of safety and security.
Working together with 3 other group members, I was responsible for designing the mobile application.
Designed a few screens of the application which were used in the surveys to answer our research question.
The purposes of the survey were to get the problems surrounding the sharing of digital keys confirmed, to take part in users' previous experiences, and to gain input on potential design solutions and methods.
Since we followed an iterative design process, we kept these survey results in mind and made the necessary changes to the high-fidelity wireframes in order to ensure that the application would invoke a feeling of safety for the users.
The results of our concept study divided the user group into four, where the first division was created to differentiate participants who have used a digital key or not, and the second division was to identify whether they -if yes- have shared a digital key or not. As can be seen from the graph, three features were graded as more “safe” than the others.
The applications that were included in the state-of-the-art analysis allowed us to identify the features that were essential to include in the prototype. Those were to see if the door is currently locked or unlocked, the ability to share the key with two different permission types (temporary and one-time access), see who locked or unlocked the door, change or remove permission to guest as well as a history view to see all of the interactions with the lock through a timeline.
The digital keys application that we designed felt safe with the majority of our sample user set.
I was not too involved in the research steps of the project since the other three team members had taken responsibility for that. Looking back, I feel like I could have delved more into the survey and analysis that was conducted as it would have been beneficial for me in my future projects.
Considering the initial survey feedback, we designed the digital keys application to be secure and intuitive. This approach garnered positive feedback during the research phase when testing the design.
