INTERNSHIP
During my time as an intern in Open Government Products, ScamShield was one of the main products that I focused on.
ScamShield detects and blocks scam SMSes and calls for users. As scams become more prominent in Singapore, there was a need to re-assess ScamShield as a solution.
My work in ScamShield largely involved exploratory research, ideating and usability testing.
EXPLORATORY RESEARCH
What do we know about scams so far?
An initial survey was sent out to our research pool. Followed with user interviews.
The design team sent out a survey to get a general sensing of how the public dealt and managed scams. We then conducted user interviews and followed up on users' responses in the first survey to understand their motivations and reasons.
IDEATING
Fighting scams as a community
From our research, a handful of users felt that crowdsourced efforts were the key to combat scams.
When verifying if something is a scam, users turned to information provided by the community or friends and family. Other key ideas that pointed us to a public dashboard was the need for a central, official source to check if something was a scam.
A workshop was conducted with the entire ScamShield team to flesh out the important features and flow of this dashboard.
After the workshop the design team refined the flow further.
USABILITY TESTING
ScamShield Public Dashboard
After refining the flow, the design team put the idea to test.
We did A/B concept testing with users to find out their thoughts on the concept and its usefulness.
USABILITY TESTING
Reporting scams should be easy
To make reporting accessible, we sought to create reporting channels on widely used platforms, starting with Telegram.
Users were generally unaware of where to report scams besides native functionality. By creating channels on commonly used platforms we ensure that users who do not install ScamShield have a place to report any scam they encounter.
Incorporating some of the insights from our research, I mapped out the flow of the Telegram bot and conducted in person usability tests with users.
