Product Design · Identity · Mobile App
A privacy-first identity platform I led end to end with a team of four. The defining call: we cut two of our own AI features, a document scanner and a file-reading assistant, once research showed the real blocker was trust, not convenience.
Problem Identification
For students, verifying identity had become a privacy risk to brace for, not a routine task.
A graduate student verifying her identity for yet another online portal. Before she uploads her documents, she hesitates, unsure where her data will go or who can access it.
"I've uploaded my passport to so many different portals. I never know who actually sees it or how it's stored. Every new system feels like a privacy risk."
For students like Pam, verification is fragmented and opaque: multiple logins, inconsistent requirements, and vague privacy policies. Users feel exposed rather than protected.
User Research
The real problem was distrust, not clunky forms.
Students described learned helplessness: burned so many times they'd stopped trusting any system. One told me, "I just assume every portal is going to leak my data eventually." That distrust became the problem Nox+ was designed to solve.
Design Process
The version that worked organized the app around the moment of verification, not document storage.
V1 treated Nox+ as a document vault (upload, store, retrieve), but storage alone didn't solve the trust problem. V2 added transparency panels, which tested better but felt overwhelming. V3 was the reorganization above, and it was the one that held up in testing.
I delegated screens across the team and held consistency through regular critiques, translating the research into the app's information architecture: the verification home, documents, history, and household controls.
Design Decisions
Each call traded a nice-to-have for the one thing Nox+ had to protect: trust.
Each was a moment where two reasonable approaches pointed in opposite directions. The decisions are where the trade-offs actually live.
A vault made storage the main event, but transparency panels added cognitive load to a moment that should feel automatic. I made the home surface what's being asked for, with security signals visible at the moment of share, and moved storage to a secondary surface.
Lost a clean "manage everything from one screen" hierarchy. Accepted because the research described identity as reactive, not planned.
Research kept surfacing the same finding: users felt exposed when their full passport was displayed on-screen, even before sharing. The most accurate preview was also the one that triggered the anxiety we were trying to solve. I made redacted preview the default (only the requested field visible) with "show full" one tap away, controlled by the user.
An extra tap for at-a-glance confirmation. Accepted because the discomfort signal was stronger than the friction signal.
An AI document scanner and an assistant with access to your files were strong pitches. Both expanded the trust surface area, exactly the thing Nox+ existed to shrink. I cut both for V1 and held the line at biometric setup, document management, the Nox+ card, transparency panels, and family controls.
Less differentiation in a pitch deck. But every cut feature would have diluted the core promise.
Solution
Prove who you are without ever putting your documents on screen.
Nox+ is built on a simple premise: people don't want to manage their identity; they want to forget about it until they need it. The app pairs a physical proof card with a mobile platform for verification across digital and in-person contexts, and every feature answers the question participants kept asking: "Who has my data, and can I trust them?"
Validation
Testing didn't just confirm the design. It changed it, every round.
Every round of usability testing existed to answer one question: do people trust this? Each round sent me back to change something specific.
21-page handbook · open PDF →
Systems Thinking
Confidence is won or lost in the states that aren't the happy path.
Before you're set up, when a document is about to lapse, when you want your data back: I designed those states as deliberately as the main flow, because that's where trust is tested.
Live Prototype
A walkthrough of the Figma prototype demonstrating the complete user flow: from onboarding and biometric setup through document management and identity verification.
Prototype Walkthrough · silent screen recording
Reflection
The hardest part of leading this wasn't the design itself. It was prioritization. With four people and 10 weeks, every yes to a feature was a no to two others. Saying no to good ideas, especially my own, was the work.
Apple's Digital ID launched in November 2025 while we were still building Nox+: the same trust problem, now surfacing in the world's largest consumer ecosystem. It didn't validate our specific design, but it was a good sign we'd read the problem right.
With more time, I'd push beyond students. The same verification anxiety hits immigrants, elderly people managing healthcare documents, and gig workers. Testing with those groups would show whether our trust-first framework holds across audiences.
