The Verifiable LEI. A Digital I.D. for organizations everywhere.
GLEIF vLEI Credentialing Software
The vLEI software provides transparency into business ownership in a matter of minutes utilizing a complex decentralized identity system called KERI. This makes business transactions and customer validation more efficient and more secure all over the world. You can read more about this on GLEIF’s website here.
My Role
I was the Lead UX Designer on this project. I collaborate with two front end and three back end developers, attend and present at stakeholder meetings, and provide instruction to partners at other companies interested in understanding the project. My process included:
User Journey Maps
Swimlane Diagrams completed in collaboration with the development team (for in-band/out of band communication)
Wireframing
Revisions based on feedback from pilots and demo presentations.
This project contained open source designs, GLEIF-specific software and mobile exploratory concepts.
I also presented on the UX Process at IIW in Mountain View, CA.
Timeline: October 2021 to February 2023
One of our product demo presentations at the Internet Identity Workshop in Mountain View, CA.
Understanding GLEIF and the KERI System
I worked to understand GLEIF’s goals, the concept of Self Sovereign Identity and the background by:
Reading research like this on the fallout from the Financial Crisis, the origins of the LEI and the use cases for the Verifiable LEI.
Conducted competitive research of companies like Trinsic in the identity space and I met with the stakeholders regularly to understand GLEIF’s aims.
Worked closely with the development team and Sam Smith, a thought leader and the creator of the KERI system to understand the technology.
The LEI trust chain (verification begins at the top level with GLEIF, who oversees the LEI (Legal Entity Identifier), Qualified Issuers verify legal entities and the authenticity of signatories.
Understanding the Verifiable LEI User
When banks and other organizations are conducting business, ensuring that they have the proper signatory often requires some trust. When an executive signs, they trust that this person is authorized to sing on behalf of the company.
The Verifiable LEI provides absolute confidence that the signatory is authorized to conduct business on behalf of the organization through delegation of a role credential. These credentials are issued by qualified and vetted issuers that are conduct due diligence before role credentials are assigned. This allows the process to be a seamless one, an organization can trust that an individual allocated the proper role credentials can be easily verified.
Key Challenge: Making zero-trust authentication user-friendly.
The main goal was to create credentialing software that was easy for users to understand and use. The swimlane diagram below illustrates this complexity.
The process included:
Create flows for users to add, revoke and store credentials.
Break down self sovereign identity concepts like key rotation and make it user friendly.
Create open source software that can be used by the greater community and partner companies to build on top of.
Utilizing progress bars and tutorials throughout, we were able to guide users through the verification process and all were able to successfully complete the demo when we tested it at IIW.
We created a tutorial process to make it easy for the user to walk through the initial authentication.
Verifiable LEI credential verification and storage
We created a flow that tracks entities that require multiple signatures and checks up on status, while still enabling the user to send and receive challenge messages.
Credential storage using known patterns was equally important. We created a contact storage system to ensure that it was understandable to users rather than just having to look at keys on their own.
GLEIF Final Designs
In August of 2022, the vLEI credentialing software had an initial pilot and we implemented changes to make it more user friendly based on their feedback (progress bars, a more user-friendly address book, a visible way to show a contact’s information on hover (the stylized “A”).
In December of 2022, the first vLEI credentials were granted to the first Qualified vLEI Issuer, Provenant. The final designs coincided with a re-branding from GLEIF, so the software also received a re-skin to match.
Some examples of components that were used as part of the ultimate design system.
“ Janet has been a quick study on the challenges of a UX for key management and signing. She has been invaluable in figuring out the complexities of UX for the delegated distributed group multi-sig workflows in the Keep software and is wonderful to work with..”
— Sam Smith, ProSapien