Designing a User-Friendly MFA Experience for the Education Sector
- Jun 13, 2025
- 4 min read
Creating a secure, supportive, and user-centered MFA experience for non-technical users in education
🧭 Project Overview
As part of a security uplift, the Education Sector Logon (ESL) platform needed to enable Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) for all users. ESL is used across schools, early learning centers, and education agencies—by people with a wide range of digital confidence and technical ability.
While MFA improves security, the out-of-the-box Microsoft MFA interface posed a usability challenge: it was generic, technical, and unbranded, creating a disconnect and confusion for many users.
Our goal:
To create an accessible, branded, and supportive MFA onboarding experience that minimized confusion, reduced support requests, and made users feel in control—even if they’d never heard of MFA before.
🧩 The Challenge
Low digital literacy: Most users weren’t familiar with MFA, and some hadn’t encountered security features like authenticator apps before.
Poor default experience: The Microsoft MFA interface was stark, technical, and inconsistent with ESL's visual language.
High support risk: A bad experience could overwhelm the service desk during rollout.
Complex phased release: The MFA experience had to work well during multiple rollout phases, while being iteratively improved based on real feedback.
🔍 Our UX Approach
A user-first, test-and-learn design process grounded in collaboration, iteration, and empathy.
🧠 Understanding the User & Context
Stakeholder conversations: Collaborated early with service desk analysts, who had deep insight into user pain points.
User personas: Built light personas for ESL users—primarily school staff, administrators, and support workers—to capture digital confidence levels and daily workflows.
Scenario mapping: Identified common access channels to ESL to inform content pathways.
🎨 Designing a Familiar, Branded MFA Flow
The first step was visual trust. If users didn’t recognize the environment, they might abandon the flow.
Created a custom, branded ESL MFA screen: Aligned it closely with the ESL interface, using familiar colors, typography, and layout structure.
Minimized visual clutter: Removed unnecessary elements from Microsoft’s UI and added ESL-specific headers, instructional sidebars, and friendly iconography.
Design fidelity: Started with low-fidelity wireframes to validate flow, then iterated to high-fidelity UI mockups that matched production environments.
✍️ Writing Content with Clarity & Care
We knew content would make or break the experience—especially for users unfamiliar with technical concepts.
Plain language first: Rewrote technical MFA terminology into everyday language.
Tone of voice: Supportive, reassuring, and instructional—not alarming or overly corporate.
Progressive disclosure: Broke steps into small chunks to avoid overwhelming users.
Adaptive guidance: Wrote orientation content that varied slightly based on whether users were using camera to Scan QR code or alternate methods.
🔁 User Testing & Iteration (Before, During, After Rollout)
Over the course of the project, we tested with 30 users in total—from internal staff to early adopters across the sector.
Tested in batches: Aligned with agile sprints and rollout phases.
Observed behavior and confusion points: What took too long? What did they skip or misread? Where did they hesitate?
Captured quotes and reactions: Some were hesitant at first, but many expressed relief once they started.
We incorporated feedback continuously:
Refined terminology
Clarified visuals around QR code scanning
Adjusted flow timing to avoid timeouts and confusion
🤝 Cross-Functional Collaboration
This wasn’t a solo design effort. From day one, it was a collaborative journey involving:
Service desk analysts – who shaped user assumptions and helped test flows
Developers and architects – who translated the UI into secure and functional code
Vendor teams – who managed integration points with Microsoft and other systems
Project managers and agile leads – who coordinated phased releases and priorities
We worked in agile cycles, running backlog grooming, standups, and iteration reviews together. Each design update aligned with sprint goals and stakeholder check-ins.
🚀 Outcomes & Impact
✅ 80% of users completed MFA setup without needing help
📉 Significant reduction in service desk calls during rollout
💬 Positive user feedback about clarity and ease of use
🎉 Praised by the Chief Digital Officer and management for being user-centric and effective
💡 Key Takeaways
Familiarity builds trust: A branded, ESL-aligned UI helped users feel comfortable and confident from the first screen.
Content is UX: Even a perfect flow can fail with unclear content. Writing simply and supportively made the experience smoother.
Testing is never done: Continuous user feedback—before, during, and after launch—was essential to refining the experience.
Collaboration drives quality: Working side-by-side with service desk, tech teams, and vendors made the design more robust and realistic.
🛠 UX Methods Used
Stakeholder interviews
User journey mapping
Low → high-fidelity prototyping
Usability testing (pre- and post-launch)
Copywriting and tone development
Accessibility review
Cross-functional workshops
Agile ceremonies (sprints, retros, standups)
This case study was created in collaboration with ChatGPT. I crafted a detailed prompt and iterated on the output to refine structure, tone, and content—demonstrating my ability to use AI tools effectively in my design process.
