Midpoint Review #2- IA Feedback - Identity Core Team, Terms of Use (Terms and Conditions)

[erinrwhite]

VFS actions

• [ ] Assign this ticket to the team member(s) responsible for addressing feedback provided by Platform.
• [ ] Comment on this ticket:
  • [ ] If the Platform reviewer has any Thoughts/Questions that require responses.
  • [ ] When Must feedback has been incorporated. As appropriate, link to any other GitHub issues or PRs related to this feedback.
  • [ ] When Should/Consider feedback has been incorporated, or if any feedback will not be addressed. As appropriate, link to any other GitHub issues or PRs related to this feedback.
• [ ] Close the ticket when all feedback has been addressed.

Thoughts/questions

• Thanks for sharing the research results. It is extremely helpful and validates a lot of my own assumptions about how folks interact with Terms of use.
• I am interested to see the minimal header go into production. It makes a lot of sense for this use case in particular (focusing the user flow).

Feedback

Practice areas will document their feedback on the VFS-provided artifacts following the Must, Should, and Consider Framework. Platform reviewers may also provide additional notes that don’t comment on the artifacts themselves but are important for implementation (eg. engineering/coding notes).

• Consider: Adding a jump-link to the effect of "What if I decline?" adjacent to the first set of buttons, that takes users down the page to the (very helpful) "Getting VA benefits and services if you don't accept" section. This could be useful for mobile especially as the scroll is longer.
• Consider: I love that research uncovered that folks are not interested in downloading a PDF. I agree it makes good sense to have the ToU easily accessible on the website for reference. Consider adding a brief note somewhere on this page letting folks know that they can access the terms of use at any time on the VA.gov website (from the bottom of every page? Linked from the privacy page? Wherever it will land.) That will further reassure users and demonstrate trustworthiness and transparency. CAIA would have good advice about how to do this.
• Consider: We are using the minimal header - what about the footer? I understand this component might not have gone through experimental design yet. This is something for us to think about implementing, for the same reasons we're pursuing the minimal header - to focus users on the task and nudge them toward a decision.

[erinrwhite]

Hi team, I chatted with @mnorthuis a bit about this as well, who seconds the recommendation to work with CAIA's IAs on the specifics of making this TOU page available on VA.gov without sign in.

From my understanding we want the terms to be accessible to anybody, whether they've agreed to them or not. Not sure how we might link to these pages from within va.gov - from the footer, like the privacy policy, or somewhere else? Then we can also tell folks when they agree to the terms, "You can always review these terms by [doing X Y Z].

Tagging in @kristinoletmuskat and @jennymayoco for visibility. Thanks!