Identified major usability gaps with high business impact in the on-boarding experience. Influenced product leadership to prioritize it in the roadmap and led a UX team to design a new experience.
UX Manager, Lead Designer
MobileIron Cloud On-Boarding Journey
Background
MobileIron Cloud is used by over 20,000 companies to secure the devices employees use access company resources. Its on-boarding experience was a dated wizard. I identified that the the existing on-boarding UI was inadequate and complicated leading to customer frustration. However it wasn’t on product leadership’s radar.
Two key changes were needed to reform the on-boarding:
Product leadership needed to prioritize it higher on the roadmap
UX needed to investigate customer needs and create an efficient, customer centric design
Influencing Product Leadership
Interview customers
We interviewed IT administrators at 10 customer sites across various verticals (banking, hospitals, retail, etc.) to understand their setup requirements and get feedback on the existing process.
We learnt that on-boarding was a frustrating experience for them. It caused long delays, extra expenses and in some cases abandonment. Analysis of the interview data provided valuable insights.
Define existing customer journey
My direct report and I met with colleagues from customer facing teams such as Professional Services to document the existing on-boarding journey so all internal stakeholders could get on the same page about the existing experience.
Extract insights
Existing one-size-fits-all workflow prompts for steps and inputs not relevant to customer's needs.
UI is complicated. It involves a lot of steps, technical language and not enough help.
No guidance is offered in choosing which features to setup and their benefits.
Workflow doesn't allow flexibility in choosing the order of steps or exit and resume as desired.
Determine business impact
To convince PMs one metric would be vital, what is improving on-boarding experience worth to the business?
To help answer that I reviewed the research insights and early designs with Marketing, Sales and Professional Services teams.
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We concluded it would potentially increase product revenue by 10% from the following gains:
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Estimated 30% improvement in subscription renewals as customers are able to setup quickly and maximize the utility of the product.
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Better value proposition for SMB customers
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Reduced calls to Customer support
Convince product leadership
Our pitch to product leadership focussed on the scale of the problem based on research insights, the opportunity for growth based on the ROI analysis and a visualization of the ideal UX using early mockups. In the discussions I emphasized that market research shows customers are increasingly expecting user experience on par with consumer apps.
“Improved On-Boarding” became one of top 3 features for 2020 roadmap
All that led to…
Design Process
Define target customers
Small & Medium Businesses and Government were decided to be the target customers.
They have simpler configuration needs and smaller IT staff compared to large enterprises. Improved on-boarding would have a valuable impact and will afford us the opportunity to start small, learn and scale up in future to handle complex usecases.
Understand user persona
Steven is an IT administrator. He is typically busy managing multiple IT applications and troubleshooting system issues.
When adding a new product in the infrastructure he aims to quickly setup the essential features of the product and test it thoroughly before integrating into the production environment.
Persona based on interviews conducted by the UX researcher
Frame design principles
Flexible
Efficient
Transparent
Scalable
Iterations and Reviews
We began by ideating the architecture of the workflow, exploring what is ideal based on user needs and design principles. Top ideas were reviewed with PM, UX and Engineering.
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The the UI design was fleshed out by designing the layout of the tasks within the steps, interaction design and other key details. This iteration was reviewed with customers.
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The updated design based on feedback was then enhanced with better visual design, text, help links, etc. It was again reviewed with customers and cross functionally.
Final Design
Customized workflow based on admin's choices.
Question and answer format is used to determine the customer's needs and corresponding steps are presented, for a customer-centered experience.
Only key usecases/features covered in on-boarding. Rest are recommended after.
On-boarding is swift and focussed by limiting it to key features and recommending other relevant features post setup. Steps can be performed in any order and, user can exit and resume.
Defaults values and test components are provided.
Setup is made easier by providing default values for inputs, where possible. Default components such as Test application, make it possible to complete a step quickly and test.
Added contextual help, tutorials and documentation
Contextual help and simple language support the admin in selecting options and providing inputs.
Feedback
This will really help reduce churn and make Cloud sticky! We can show tailored upsell ads in the on-boarding workflow and Recommended features list.
- VP of Marketing
Wow! This is really easy. I remember spending two days reading the 30 page getting started guide and knowledge base articles to plan which features I need to setup. With this I can just start setting up.
- Customer
This will save us so much time, which means save us money and help us focus on complex use cases. We made tutorial videos for basic steps and would be glad to embed those in this workflow.
- VP of Professional Services
I think I can really setup a POC and test on iOS devices in a couple hours. That’s incredible and much quicker than the competing products that we have tested before like Intune.
- Customer
Onward and Upward
The Concept designs were met with excitement and engagement from cross functional leads and led to several discussions about changes needed to support that vision, such as enhancements to the technology stack.
In collaboration with PM and Engineering leads, we walked backwards from the vision to break up the work into phases.
The Concept design showcased a vision of what the on-boarding experience should be. The goal now for the UX team is to flesh out the workflow, evaluate it using user testing and enhance the experience with great visual design.