During this internship, I worked on an identity and ownership management system for the firearms industry. Ethical Identity is a startup company looking to put personal data back in the hands of the users so they have control over their own individual information.

The users for this project were: Firearm Owners in the United States

My Role

UX Design Intern

Tool Used

Figma
Miro
Google Forms

Timeline

Summer

Background

The firearms industry was chosen as the first area to explore because:

• Firearm owners have a strong opinion on personal privacy reflected by laws passed (they do not want others to know about their ownership records) and
• There is a big need in this industry - there is no easy universal system to determine if a second hand firearm is legally owned by the seller or has been used in a crime.

We set out to apply our technology to this field to make firearm sales more responsible and more safe.

Methodology

For this project, we utilized an agile SCRUM methodology. This means that we worked in 2 week intervals, with the result at the end of every two weeks being some form of mockup to be tested and a review of how the design process went during that sprint. During each step we went through the process of research, design, ideation and testing. We utilized standup meetings each day to share out how that day went and what we accomplished. After each sprint, we had a retrospective and planning meeting to go over how that sprint went, what could be improved, and to map out what we would accomplish in the next sprint.

The Team

I worked with 3 other UX interns during this internship. We collaborated on some mini projects during the 3 months, but also worked separately on individual projects and then used each other for critique and feedback.

We also worked closely with developers and project managers to ensure our designs were fesible and to aid in the implementation and production of those designs.

Biggest Internship Takeaways

During this internship, I had many valuable experiences that helped me learn about the design process and the industry.

• Designing for a user group unlike me - The industry that Ethical Identity chose to apply their identity management system to first was the firearms industry. This was a challenge for me because I had to learn to separate my personal and political views from the design in order to not bias them or the research. I know that in the industry world this is an important skill to be able to have - to separate yourself from the users you are working to design for.
• Working with developers - Unlike school project and other industry experience I have had, this internship taught me how to work closely with developers and allowed me to experience seeing a design all the way through. After creating a high fidelity mockup, I would have to present it to developers in a way that could be easily implemented. I then worked closely with the developer on that project to assist in making the end result match what I had researched, created and presented. This involved answering questions, adapting my design to be more feasible, and seeing the whole design process through until the design was live.
  
• Fast paced startup environment - Because things are constantly changing in a startup environment, I learned to adapt to shifting project expectations, working on multiple things at once, and having something to different to work on each day. I learned to be flexible and try out different projects that I would not have been able to do at a larger company. By wearing many hats, I quickly gain invaluable insight into a wide range of creative talents. I also learned to create high fidelity mockups quickly to keep up with the speed of the agile scrum sprints.
  
• Multiple platform design - This internship required me to work on designs for Web, Mobile and a Kisok. I got to work on prototypes for all 3 of these platforms, while also improving my ability to create cross-platform designs. Learning to create mockups that allow for a seamless experience between platforms was an extremely valuable experience.
  
• Agile scrum methodology - I gained experience working in the agile scrum method, with 2 week sprints through the design process and doing standups / retrospectives at the end of each sprint. This was a great experience because I know this mehodology is used frequently at the industry level.
  

Research

User Demographics Research

Race/Gender: White men are especially likely to be gun owners: About half (48%) say they own a gun, compared with about a quarter of white women and nonwhite men (24% each) and 16% of nonwhite women.

‍Education Level: In general, the more education an individual has the less likely they are to own a gun. Overall, about three-in-ten adults with a high school diploma or less (31%) and 34% of those with some college education say they own a gun; a quarter of those with a bachelor’s degree or more say the same. \

‍Where in the US: Regionally, Northeasterners stand out as the least likely to own guns: 16% of adults who live in the Northeast say they own a gun, about half the share who say this in the South (36%), Midwest (32%) and West (31%).

‍Rural/Suburban/Urban: Overall, 46% of Americans who live in rural parts of the country own a gun, compared with 28% of those who live in the suburbs and 19% of those in urban areas.

Comparative Analysis

In order to see what other firearms companies are doing, my team conducted a comparative analysis with 16 gun related companies. Here I have highlighted three.

• The Second Amendment Foundation (SAF): This site did a good job presenting information clearly and cleanly while still being bipartial. Images focused on buildings, people and legislature and themes were not too overpowering.
  
• Guns.com: This was another firearms marketplace, so it was important to see how they presented this information. A more safe color scheme was chosen (brown/green/nature) and images focused on the guns themselves. Categorization of firearms was done well and layout was presented like a typical marketplace which made the information easy to understand.
  
• Remington: This fireams marketplace focused on being presented as a hunting site - emphasizing dark greens and nature images. The homepage was a sample of inventory which leads user right to purchasing the firearms.
  
• Overall Takeaways: Very obvious themes across sites: either red, white, blue or nature (greens, browns). Images can fit the theme without being too obviously gun owner-ish. The SAF site did a good job of this. A heavy emphasis on the marketplace as the landing page directs the purpose of the site.
  

Personas

We created 10 personas for each of the people that would be involved in the process of the firearms industry - purchasing, selling regulating, etc. We created personas to help us better understand the motivations of our users. We also used these personas to walk through user stories / flows with, and to do some initial basic testing with. A few of our personas are described below:

1. A responsible gun owner who wants to make firearm purchases safer in order to be a better citizen
   
2. The technology skeptic, who is worried about the implications of new technology
   
3. The personal rights advocate, who is motivated by having personal freedom and individuality
   
4. Firearms salesperson, firearm manufactorer, and firearm store owner who focus on increasing sales and doing their daily job
   

Surveys

In order to get information from users during a time of social distancing, my team utilized surveys to get user input to direct our design choices for the color scheme of our platforms. We conducted 2 surveys with 2 different goals. The first survey was to understand the main concerns and interests of our users with the marketplace we are creating in order to know how to design it best for them. The main takeaways we got from this survey were:

• Concerns with privacy, security and government access
  
• People prefer to sell to someone they know. This makes them feel safer and infers they want to trust the previous owner
  
• When buying, users focused on firearm quality and condition. When selling, users were concerned about unsafe usage with the firearm and selling to someone with harmful intentions
  

The second survey was to understand how our users perceived different color schemes / branding with this delicate subject. We wanted to understand the attitudes towards different design feels, and what emotions they evoked. The main takeaways were found by creating an affinity diagram to understand the responses from users.

• Many people expressed how certain colors made them feel. For example, multiple people associated blue with trust and security, which was an important trait we wanted to associate with our brand
  
• People were conflicted on the hunting / USA themes, if they were too overpowering and not neutral enough, or appealing to the theme
  

User Flows

For each of the projects we worked on during this internship, we started by using our personas to create user flows. This way we could work through all the paths our users could take to walk through a certain scenario. For example, this first flow is our Registration Flow. We looked at scenarios like “passwords don’t match” or “user already has registered”. We looked at registration, activation and login errors to make sure our designs covered all the possible scenarios our users could encounter.
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Other user flows we worked through include: registering at a kisok in store, purchasing a firearm store, validating firearms/identities in store and listing a firearm to sell.

Login/Rester + Teaser Page Flow

To kickstart the website and start thinking about how the rest of our flows will begin, our team designed the login and register pages. We were also tasked with creating the teaser page as a placeholder site before the rest of our designs throughout the summer were implemented.

The purpose of the teaser page was to give users an understanding of what Trusted Arms was with the ability to sign up to learn more information.

Billing Flow

For this flow, I was asked to design the system that Ethical Identity uses to charge firearm stores for firearm/identity validations. This required a system with 2 ends- an interface that the firearm owner would use to see transactions and pay invoices, and an interface for Ethical Identity employees to send an invoice to the firearm store.

Ethical Identity Interface

Firearm Store Interface:

Navigation + User Settings Flow

For these designs I focused on industry best practices as well as what fields were necessary to the individual project.

Front-End Marketplace Flow

Our team designed the interface that users would see when landing on the website. This included presenting the marketplace and allowing for the purchase and exchange of firearms.

To the left is a home landing page, and below is a firearms listing preview. Below that is the page for filling out the new listing information in order to sell it in the marketplace.

This prototype is a messaging screen between users - the buyer and the seller of the firearm. This page includes the listing information for that firearm, along with the transaction details that the users agree on and a messaging box for communication purposes. This is similar to a facebook marketplace interface - allowing for the selling and purchase of items being individuals.

Another aspect of the front end website is an articles section to give users more information on related subjects and to increase engagement. These were the final designs for the articles section of the website.

Social Media/Branding

I was tasked with starting the social media accounts (twitter, instagram and facebook) for Trusted Arms (the firearms marketplace for Ethical Identity). In order to do this, I did research into creating branding for a company and created a logo / cover photo that would be used across the platforms. I also did competitive analysis with Chase, Vans, Heckler and Koch and Toyota. These brands had well established branding with large followings so I wanted to see what they were doing to create that brand following.

From this research, I had the following main takeaways:

• Variety of different forms of media used (videos, pictures, stories)
  
• Kept branding / colors consistent
  
• Some chose to include activism, diversity, company values, in their posts (talking about employees etc)
  
• Some like toyota and vans and firearm companies chose to ALWAYS have the product in the picture, because the product is tangible. Brands without that, like Chase, focused more on how to use their services, and pictures of people, outside stuff
  
• Honestly company values again - huge in creating brand loyalty and makes people identify with the company. Also makes the company seem human and aware of current events

Above is the brainstorming for our instagram feed layout. The logo we chose for our social media is shown to the right, and other brainstorming choices for facebook headers along with comparative analysis is shown to the right.

Here are the social media accounts that were created with the logo and cover photo that I designed for our brand. Social media posts will be coming soon.