CVS Caremark date of birth multi-factor authentication alternative

CVS Caremark

Outcomes

Following the implementation of our solution, we observed the following results:

• 5.3% increase in compiled sign in success for CVS Caremark web users

• 98% of users prompted to provide their date of birth during sign in chose to use the date of birth option, as opposed to MFA

• Users that verify their identity with date of birth successfully sign in 99.4% of the time

• Mobile web customer satisfaction (CSAT) rating improved by 3.6 points

Role / Team

Self:

• Facilitated cross-discipline workshops between Experience Design, Content Strategy, and Accessibility Experts

• Coordinated product expectations and delivery

• Wrote research questions, guided the writing of the testing script and results analysis

Design team:

• Information and requirements gathering

• Early wireframing and draft content

• Prototype design

• Created a draft research plan and presented findings to stakeholders

Methods

• Passive research (analytics and customer feedback review)

• Heuristic analysis

• Usability testing

Information Gathering

The idea for our solution manifested naturally. Reflecting on customers’ over the counter pharmacy experience, asking for a person’s date of birth to verify their identity–in theory–seemed like a form factor that users you would be familiar with. 

However, after the initial implementation on the CVS Pharmacy application we quickly learned through user feedback that although familiar with this form of identity verification many users had reservations about providing their date of birth in this context.

Collaborative Design and Iterations

We began with a heuristic analysis of the first implementation. From this analysis, 2 areas stood out to us:

1. The content, although clear and concise, lacked empathy and an explanation of why we needed the user’s date of birth. 

2. No control or flexibility, the first implementation required users to enter their date of birth with no alternative options.

Our initial sketches included a combination of lengthy taxing explanations and various selection approaches that introduced additional pages (friction) into the flow. I facilitated working sessions with Design, Content Strategy, and Accessibility experts to guide the team toward a solution that resolved the issues we identified without adding friction or more content than necessary.

Usability Evaluation

With our proposed solution ready, we conducted an unmoderated usability test using a Figma prototype in Usertesting.com. We tested with 9 participants from the usertesting.com pool, with the following recruiting criteria:

• CVS Caremark member at last 18 years of age that has signed into and completed a task on their CVS Caremark.com account within the last month

• 2 out of the 9 participants were non-native English speakers

• 2 out of the 9 participants have a comprehension disability

Our primary research questions included:

• (Behavioral) When provided date of birth as a means of verification as an alternative option to receiving a one-time passcode, which option do participants proceed with?

• (Behavioral) Do participants discover and understand the available identity verification options?

• (Attitudinal) Of those participants that elect to use the existing multi-factor authentication process, how do they feel about the date-of-birth identity verification alternative?

Go to Figma prototype →

Findings and Recommendations

Even though presented with both date of birth and MFA identity verification options, all participants elected to sign in using the date of birth identity verification option.

All participants discovered both identity verification options and provided a verbal understanding aligned with our internal definition of each option.

1. Although all participants discovered both options, 2 participants took slightly longer and had to review the page layout and content carefully to discover the MFA option.

2. From this finding we added white space to the design and modified the text font size to help the MFA option standout more in the page layout operating under the hypothesis that doing so would make it easier to discover for sighted users. 

Although participants elected to provide their date of birth, 2 test participants expressed some hesitancy toward providing their date of birth. These same participants also shared that although reluctant, they would still use the date of birth option citing that they believed it to be faster than the alternative MFA option.

Final Design and Annotations