👩🏻💻Role
Lead product designer, developing experiences for designing, building, and collaborating with business partners.
Hi, I'm Kim Ku.
Currently designing products at Meta. See selected work or more about me.
Meta: Privacy Certifications
Helping employees review the state of privacy at the company to meet regulatory obligations.
Privacy Certifications — product UI screenshot
Business problem
To meet regulatory obligations, hundreds of employees need to review their product's privacy areas to help the CEO and CPO certify the company's state of privacy on a quarterly and annual basis.
People problem
For employees, this would be their first exposure to the privacy compliance process, so they'd need proper onboarding to confidently do their due diligence.
Challenges
- The bar for the new process was high. Meeting it would mean more scrutiny and time.
- This was a v0.1 product. Because no one knew how reviewing privacy on a company-wide level would like, requirements would shift to continually adjust to growing needs and new information.
- Multi-focused design. We were designing both the user-facing interface as well as the back-end administration to set up and monitor the process.
- Privacy is complicated with technical and legal jargon that wasn't common knowledge.
Discovery: Defining the certification program we needed to run
I sat and discussed with the privacy program manager to determine the key areas needed for the certification process. From there, we defined the user journeys we would get involved in, and what work was needed from them to complete their job.
This work set the foundation of how a structure, an overflow, and timelines needed to meet our deadline.
Diagram: three-phase certification program
Research: Understanding users, where they stand and what they need
I then worked with a UX researcher to perform intensive sessions with our persona types to understand their familiarity with the certification process and their day-to-day involvement with privacy policies.
This work helped us prioritize where enter, the more experienced, where to provide contextual help and how to structure onboarding experiences in-product.
2×2 matrix: privacy involvement × product focus
Exploration: Running a design sprint to optimize user experience
I facilitated a design sprint with cross functional partners and designers to brainstorm different ways to frame success at every step of their certification journey.
Sprint: post-it clusters on whiteboard
After voting on the ideas we thought could transform use the most, we did a round of crazy eights which helped clarify how we could approach the solution.
Crazy-eights sketches
Storyboard sketches
Design: Utilizing agile to pivot quickly
While we solidified the business direction, I started generating prototypes without complete requirements in place.
Because of the aggressive schedule, this loose-spec approach allowed for quick pivots when requirements changed and gave tangible designs for more concrete feedback.
Early prototype screens
Anchoring: Refining the experience using four design principles
1. Don't overwhelm
It was important to utilize progressive disclosure, to show only what was necessary to decrease cognitive load.
It's been interesting to see that as the process matures, users are asking to see more details up front.
UI: progressive disclosure
2. Keep it simple
Creating clear intuition i.e. to help people move from review to review and also pivotal to the product's success.
With continuous feedback, we're still improving even as mod deeds every quarter.
UI: review cards, "Start review"
3. Be helpful
Considering that many users may not know much about the program and company's privacy practices up front, we included helpful signals throughout the experience.
UI: "Reviewed with exception" state
4. Consider the program, not just the product
The deeper in the rabbit hole I went, the more I realized that we had to consider the entire experience of the program in addition to the product. This meant adding notification, checking in with training material and running service for users.
UI: "Privacy Certifications Contributor" badge email
Success metrics
To understand sentiment, an in-product CSAT survey was displayed at the completion of a review. This data, along with user interviews, drove future roadmap enhancements.
| Survey question | Pilot favorability | Launch favorability | Score change |
|---|---|---|---|
| The training content I was given prepared me for sub-certification. | 38% | 58% | +20 |
| The sub-certification tool's capabilities met the requirements for completing my work. | 48% | 68% | +20 |
| The sub-certification tool was easy to use. | 64% | 83% | +19 |
| I had all of the information I needed to complete my work. | 46% | 65% | +19 |
| I received clear and timely notifications throughout the process. | 66% | 75% | +9 |
| I had time to complete my sub-certification work. | 78% | 75% | -3 |