Challenge

NSW government were bringing in new regulatory frame work to lift the standard for the same day alcohol delivery market to stop the underage customers from purchasing alcohol online and getting it delivered on the same day. To restrict the online purchase, a mechanism was needed to digital verify the age and identity of the purchaser whilst preserving the privacy of personal information collected during the transaction.

• Customers must be able to use their digital identity to confirm they are over 18 without disclosing additional personal information​

• The ISP must obtain consent from the Identity Owner prior to sharing Attributes from an identity

 Solution

Using Service NSW Digital ID, customers will be able to prove they are over the age of 18 when purchasing alcohol online for the same day delivery. With Connect ID as the broker, customers will be able to choose SNSW Digital ID as an option to prove their identity.

 Team

Agile team consisted of a product manager, project manager, two product designers (including myself) and engineers. We had two week recurring sprints with daily standups, backlog refinement, sprint planning and a retro.

Discover

 Competitor analysis

Age verification - alcohol retailers

I started off my research work with looking into how current alcohol retailers verify customer's age when purchasing alcohol. Popular retailers such as Dan Murphy's, BWS and Bottle Mart were not conducting digital age verification and only ask customers if they are over 18 years of age when entering the website (without needing to provide ID). Then I broadened my search to retailers who sells other age restricted products such as sharp objects, chemicals, etc online. Non of the retailers had a comparative age verification process which we were proposing.

Digital identity providers

There are several Identity Service Providers (ISP) already operating in Australia including myID (formerly MyGov ID), Connect ID, Mastercard and Australia Post Digital iD as well as International service providers such as DocuSign.

I looked into each ISP's product offering and examples of how they have integrated verification service with their clients.

Journey mapping

I developed a detailed journey map illustrating the customer’s experience when purchasing a bottle of wine from an online retailer and having it delivered to their home. The journey map highlights each step of the process from the customer's perspective, starting from the initial decision to buy wine online, through the search and selection process, the checkout experience, verifying age,  and the post-purchase phase, including delivery.

The map captures key touchpoints including the age verification requirement which will be a new step in the process for customers. Potential pain points and opportunities for imporementd were identified at each touch points.

Design

Wireframes and a prototype

Once the pilot option was decided (app to app), I created screens required for SNSW Digital ID to be integrated into a transaction with an alcohol retailer. For user testing, an Invission prototype was created.

Test

To kick off user testing, I facilitated a workshop with the project team to collaboratively define the objectives and goals for the upcoming testing phase.

Assumptions

The Customer already has a NSW digital ID with SNSW.

Hypothesis

• Customers are happy to share more than what is needed to prove proof of age.

• Customers are happy to consent to share personal information even if the relying parties name/brand explicitly not mentioned on the consent screen.

• Customers would recognise and select SNSW as an identity provider

• Customer may go through the flow without any friction

Questions

• How would you rate your previous online alcohol purchases?

• Would customers choose NSW DIGI ID as the IDP choice?

• Do customers expect to pick and choose what PI to share (selective disclosure)?

• Do customers only want to share they are 'over 18'?

• Do customers understand that they are not sharing their actual D.O.B?

• Do customers understand the information on the consent screen?

• Do customers expect to see sharing history in their SNSW account? (Who requested?) - Post

• Do customers expect to get a record of a successful identity attribute sharing? (Push notification/ email) - Post

• Do customer expect to prove age every time they purchase from the same retailer?

• How easy/difficult was the process?

Testing sessions

We tested ten (10) participants over two days. One-on-one interviews were conducted via MS Teams. Each interview had a facilitator and a notetaker.

Synthesis

Report

Some of the insights discovered from user testing sessions:

• Uptake of NSW Digital ID as an identity provider was high due to the trust associated with the SNSW brand.

• Participants knew what the are consenting for. They understood they were sharing personal information with the retailer as part of the checkout process.

• Participants prefer not to read terms and conditions (T&C) because they are lengthy and time consuming to read. They are here to purchase a bottle of champagne and want to get it done as quickly as possible.

• Almost all of participants agreed that verifying age with Digital ID is a simple, quick and easy process. They understood that verifying age when purchasing alcohol online may reduce the risk of minors accessing alcohol.

• Some participants said the checkout process will now take longer due to online age verification.

Develop and deliver

After the final design iteration, the designs were handed over to the engineering team. QA and accessibility testing was conducted on the production build.

SNSW partnership with Tipple to run the pilot program. Customers from certain postcodes participated in the program and used their NSW Digital ID to verify age when ordering alcoholic products, to be delivered on the same day. 

The pilot was a success!

Post pilot survey was conducted with the participants to gather more insights of using NSW Digital ID in online transaction.