A My Service Canada Account (MSCA) is a secure online portal that gives Canadians access to government services and benefits. It's one of the key pieces of the government services digitalization project.
Users have a hard time registering the account.
The success rate of My Service Canada Account (MSCA) registration is lower than 70%, which indicates there's millions of Canadians are not able to access the online services provided by Service Canada.
• Users don't understand what they need to provide during the registration process.
• Users need to go through 20 - 30 pages in order to register the account
• There are various of registration and authentication methods, but they can cause misunderstanding and some will cause 5-10 days delay.
To reduce the steps within registration process of the My Service Canada Account (MSCA), and help user get prepared before registrating.
Studying and deconstructing the current registration flow is the first step of the research. It's a complicated flow required cross-department cooperation.
Part of the journey mapping of the MSCA registration flow
In order to have a deeper understanding of the users, we pulled up some related survey and interviews targeting the age group from 18 - 65+. The result allow us to dig deeper into users' need and provides a border perspective of the problem area.
GC Task Success Survey - My Service Canada Account (MSCA) - register, sign in, help
Duration - 2021.01 - 2021.12
Population - Survey 53,459
MSCA Survey 588
The complex registration flows of the multiple user types and their interactions with one another needed to be laid out in detail. We decided to conduct a baseline testing on the existing product, to
1. Set up a baseline for the following design and testing.
2. Further understand the product.
Due to the complexity of the product, we conducted 2 rounds of baseline usability tests, to cover the different sign-up methods and the different sizes of screens. The tests are moderated and conducted in both English and French.
Duration - 2022.11 - 2023.05
Population - 34
Multiple participants state that they are lost when they were deep in the registration process.
Participants understood the information on this page, but they didn’t make a connection from it to the following pages
Participants didn’t know what is a personal access code.
Participants found the process of getting the personal access code break the registration process and they don’t know where to go back
We decided to improve the process in 2 aspects:
1. Simplify the process
2. Enhance the information presentation
Taking out some redundant process is one of our targets.
It requires cross-department cooperation and communication.
The proposal is taken and still under discussion.
Displaying the required information is a crucial part of the registration process. We design an interactive process to nudge users to read and understand what's required within the process they want to register with.
The final design was an interactive wizard which allows users to go through a set of preset questions based on branch logic. The branch logic is carefully verified by a series of A/B tests and content tests.
The new standard login/registration interface has been applied to the applicable pages.
Design a step-by-step question sequence to guide users gradually, preventing unnecessary back-and-forth due to insufficient preparation of materials.
To provide clearer explanations for the options and reduce the user's cognitive load.
To achieve the goal I design some new components for the content.
Our team also collaborated with the design system team to create some new visual components.
The design underwent three rounds of scripted user testing. The results demonstrate that the solution reduces users' cognitive load and shortens the time required to complete the registration process.
The design enhances the success rate of registering a My Service Canada Account, enabling more users to complete it effectively.
The design replaced the old registration flow and is now being adopted by users.
Check it out on the Employment and Social Development Canada - Create a My Service Canada Account