Payment Design
A new method of making purchases is using Near Field Communication devices - wireless enabled devices that can communicate information over a very short (4-11 CM) distance of each other. One method of integrating NFC and payment devices has been Mastercard’s paypass system, which uses an RFID tag to communicate with a reader. This tag usually contains a restricted amount of information, such as:
- User Info
- Device the Tag is Associated with
- Payment Information
Introducing novel payment methods to a mobile devices introduces a range of potential issues that an interaction designer will be required to address. While the standard usability issues present in any financial transaction are still an issue (security, efficiency, user feedback), several other use cases specific to mobile devices become apparent. How do users register payment information and personalize a card on a mobile device? What if a user needs to keep a number of cards? How do we ensure that the user is actually attempting a purchase, and is not near a reader?
To address these issues, I leveraged the usability use cases previously identified with credit card readers and augmented these cases with cases specific to mobile devices. This provided a suite of potential tasks that would need to performed by the user.
After performing some simple task analyses for each task, the design team developed a series of decision-action diagrams. By creating decision action diagrams for each task, the design team was able to:
- Identify decision points and actions where interface prompts were required
- Verify that the logic developed from the task analysis was followed by the interface
- Generate separate use cases and interface requirements from failure use cases
Examples of Several Decision diagrams are presented below.
Making a One-Time Payment
Card Management Menu
While no finished design is presented here, the final design is slated to appear in an upcoming publication. More information will be provided soon.