Face ID pretotype

Background

The business wanted to introduce a seamless way of identifying staff when completing or editing transaction on the POS. The idea is that it will scan and identify that staff while he/she/they is processing an order.

The current process is not 100% reliable. Each sales person enter in a sales ID at the end of their transaction. However, if they typed in the wrong number, that order would be associated with a different salesperson. Problem arise when a customer is following up on their order and the person helping would try to reach out to the sales person associated to that order.

The team is exploring different solutions and one of the is biometrics, in particular facial recognition.

Implementing biometrics is not a small task, it involves; new hardware, software development work and third party provider cost. It is also not something that everyone is comfortable with.

The quickest way to test this was to use pretotype.

Pretotype + HotJar

Pretotype is a method of testing a feature without actually building it, keeping the effort and cost low. In this case, I used the Pinocchio approach. I faked a face ID feature and made it seem like it’s working at then end of every transaction.

After a day or two, I launched a survey on the POS using HotJar. I wanted to see how our branch users would react to this. Many were uncomfortable using their face as an identification method.

Survey Results

There were a lot of questions and concerns from our users.

• Face mask won’t work for Face ID

• People don’t feel safe or comfortable knowing that such a personal data is being stored somewhere

• It’s too intrusive

• People are comfortable with the current process

Looking at this, I noticed that a lot of our branch staff isn’t comfortable with this technology as it is rather invasive. It’s also not going to be bullet proof, because it won’t always work, especially with face mask. There should be a fallback option for the staff to identify themselves.

Looking at this chart, a lot of people prefer using a pin, which would be somewhat similar to the current experience. Seems like they are resisting to drastic changes that doesn’t provide them with a lot of value.

We have yet to explore other possible solutions. An ID tag which has been used in many retail, hospitality and other industries might be a better solution. Not invasive and potentially quicker.

Using ID tag will mean that the business will have to roll out a new process to ensure that these tags don’t get lost or damaged too often.