Overview

By redesigning post-exam messaging and implementing a secure name editing workflow, I reduced customer support calls for these specific issues by 60% while maintaining system integrity.

Problem Statement

Users completing Food Safety Manager training encountered unclear post-exam messaging and frequent login failures when accessing the ANSI proctoring site, while administrators struggled with name discrepancies that didn't match legal documentation. How might we create clear post-exam pathways and secure name editing workflows that reduce user confusion, prevent certification fraud, and minimize support burden?

Business Goals

My design objectives were to eliminate confusion at the two moments where users were most likely to abandon or escalate — the post-exam handoff and the name correction workflow — without compromising the compliance integrity the platform depended on. I framed two strategic questions that shaped how I approached each problem:

1. HMW clarify post-exam guidance to reduce user confusion and login failures during the TAP-to-ANSI handoff?

2. HMW enable secure name corrections that empower admin self-service while preventing certification fraud?

User Research

Understanding Certification Friction, Admin Dependencies, and Support Escalation Patterns

To identify where users encountered confusion and what drove support requests, I conducted heuristic evaluations using Jakob Nielsen's 10 Usability Heuristics and analyzed support ticket logs and call transcripts. This research revealed quantitative patterns in post-exam confusion, login failures, and name correction requests that were creating support bottlenecks.

Research Takeaway

There is a Need for Proactive System Guidance

Support volume concentrated around two predictable moments: post-exam transitions and name corrections. Users escalated not because problems were complex, but because the system provided no in-context guidance for resolution. I addressed this by designing anticipatory messaging and secure self-service flows that reduced cognitive load at critical decision points.

Problem 1: ANSI Handoff

HMW Clarify Post-Exam Guidance to Reduce User Confusion and Login Failures During the TAP-to-ANSI Handoff?

Redesign post practice exam messaging to eliminate access barriers for food safety trainees, reducing confusion and support calls while ensuring seamless entry to their certification exam.

Problem 2: Name Correction Process

HMW Enable Secure Name Corrections that Empower Admin Self-Service While Preventing Certification Fraud?

Redesign the student name management workflow to balance security and flexibility, allowing legitimate corrections while preventing unauthorized changes that compromise certification validity.

Conclusions

Redesigning two friction points — the post-exam handoff and the name correction workflow — reduced support calls by 60% and contributed to a 45% total support reduction. The challenge wasn't just clarity, it was clarity within a system that couldn't afford to be wrong. Every decision had to balance user autonomy against fraud prevention and compliance integrity, which meant advocating for the user while respecting constraints that existed for good reason.

Heuristic evaluation proved that you don't always need extensive user testing to find what's broken, systematic analysis of an existing flow, mapped against established principles, surfaced the exact moments where users were falling through the cracks. Translating those observations into solutions that developers could implement quickly within an Agile environment taught me how to design within reality, not around it.

Most importantly, this project taught me that impactful UX isn't always about building something new. One screen I proposed didn't exist anywhere in the platform before I identified the gap, designed it, and got it shipped to production. Sometimes the most valuable thing a designer can do is notice what's missing.