The problem
The existing way for users to delete their accounts, was to send an email using our contact us section, to request their account be deleted. As we grow our user base during public beta, this could become difficult for the team to manage. Additionally, the experience for users could be simpler, and more consistent with other government services.
There would still be an element of a manual process involved, as their email may have been used to sign up to receive emails from the service, which was managed separately to any progress data connected to their use of the training.
The team needed to consider both of these elements when designing an account deletion journey.
Hypotheses
We believe that users will think that by clicking on a button that says delete, they think one click will delete their account We will use language such as 'request to close' rather than 'delete' We will know this to be true if users expect the account will not be deleted on click
We believe users will assume all of their data will be deleted automatically We need to manage expectations around timescales around data deletion We will know this to be true if we receive little to no queries to our email inbox
Data considerations
Data protection
The team had a detailed discussion with a Data Protection Officer in DfE to make sure we managed the retention and deletion of user data correctly.
They advised that we would need to make it clear that:
- we will remove all personally identifiable data i.e. name and email
- we will retain anonymised data of their learning journey modules started completed assessment, confidence check answers
- if they had signed up for email alerts or to take part in user research, that we will remove their data from here too
Data the team might need
The team needed to find out why users were deleting their account so that we could understand how we could iterate the training to better meet user needs.
Designs
Things we needed to include
- We needed to include a page to ask users why they were deleting their account
- We needed to include a page to explain what data we were keeping and what data would be deleted and why
- We wanted to re-authenticate people by using their password because of the destructive action users were taking
Screenshots of the designs
