FEATURED CASE STUDY
Improving a Self-Guided Fingerprinting System
Redesigning biometric capture workflows for a national identity verification platform.
About the System
Sterling Identity Fingerprinting is a biometric identity verification system that uses custom fingerprint capture kiosks deployed in hundreds of retail locations across the United States. The system supports employment background checks and individuals requesting Criminal History Record Information (CHRI) from the FBI for purposes such as licensing, certification, adoption, and work or study abroad.
Candidates complete the fingerprint capture process at a kiosk while trained technicians verify identity documents and assist when needed. The platform was developed and operated by Sterling Identity, a division of Sterling.
The Goal
Enable individuals to complete a sensitive, regulated fingerprint capture process independently, accurately, and with confidence, while reducing reliance on in-person guidance and customer support.
My Role
As Lead UX Designer, I was responsible for improving the usability and reliability of the fingerprint capture workflow. My work included workflow analysis, interaction design, and collaboration with engineering and biometric specialists to improve capture success rates while maintaining regulatory requirements.
Users
The system served two primary audiences:
Candidates: Individuals completing fingerprinting for background checks, licensing, or identity verification. Most had never participated in fingerprinting before.
Technicians: Trained staff who verified identity documents and assisted candidates when needed.
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System Constraints
Fingerprint capture must meet strict biometric quality standards to be accepted by downstream identity verification systems. Prints must include clear ridge detail and complete rolls for each finger.
In addition, the system needed to:
Support self-guided kiosk interactions
Comply with identity verification regulations
Work with specialized fingerprint scanning hardware
Minimize technician intervention during routine captures
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The Challenge
Although the kiosk interface was straightforward, many candidates struggled to produce acceptable fingerprint captures. Fingerprint quality requirements are strict: prints must show clear ridge detail and complete rolls in order to have them accepted by the FBI for processing.
When captures failed, candidates often had to repeat the process multiple times or request assistance from technicians. These issues increased support calls and slowed throughput at fingerprinting locations.
To understand why captures were failing, I reviewed the kiosk workflow and worked closely with the customer support team to analyze common failure scenarios. Support staff reported that many candidates struggled to complete fingerprint rolls successfully and often repeated the same unsuccessful motion multiple times before requesting assistance.
Key Insights
Analysis of the capture workflow and support call patterns revealed that most user failures were not caused by interface complexity, but by missing system feedback during biometric capture.
Users often did not realize when a capture was incomplete or improperly rolled. Without clear feedback, they repeated the same motion and produced another unusable capture.
Design Strategy
The original system provided little feedback when captures failed. Users were simply prompted to retry without understanding why the capture was unsuccessful.
To address this gap, I introduced two new guidance mechanisms:
Real-time capture feedback dialogs that explained when and why a fingerprint roll was incomplete
Optional pre-capture instructional videos showing examples of successful and unsuccessful fingerprint captures
Capture Feedback Dialogs
The system analyzes fingerprints as they are captured. The redesign added guidance and exposed capture failures through user alerts. Instead of simply rejecting the capture, the interface explains the issue and shows how to correct it.
These feedback dialogs did not exist in the original workflow. They were introduced to diagnose common capture failures and guide users toward successful fingerprint scans.
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Instructional Videos: Teaching Users How to Capture Prints
Because most candidates had never participated in fingerprinting before, the redesign also introduced optional instructional videos showing examples of successful and unsuccessful captures before users began the process.
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Supporting Error Recovery
The capture workflow also allows users to review prints and retake individual fingers when needed. This prevents users from restarting the entire process and reduces frustration during capture.
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Impact
Improvements to capture guidance and feedback helped candidates complete fingerprinting successfully with fewer errors.
Reduced fingerprinting-related support calls by 17%
Improved successful self-service completion of fingerprint capture
Reduced burden on on-site guides and customer service teams
Established a reusable pattern for system-level feedback across the platform
Reflection
This project reinforced how critical system feedback is when users interact with specialized hardware. Even simple workflows can fail if users do not understand how the physical interaction affects the system’s output. By focusing on feedback and error recovery, the design improved both user confidence and operational efficiency.
Organizations
Sterling Identity
(a division of the global background screening company, Sterling)
My Role
Lead UX Designer
Date / Duration
Apr 2015 - Sep 2020
