Instructional onboarding for deploying a cloud file storage service and protection product.
This was a product that consisted of a combination of hardware and software to create a cloud solution for file storage, as well as the backup and recovery of that data.
I led the full design on this which included interaction, visual and content design.
IT and system administrators at enterprise-, medium-, and small-businesses.
The very nature of this product was complex due to the domain knowledge needed, as well as being multi-channel (both hardware and software) over distributed physical locations. We identified the need to better help users with the first-time setup of the product. Because target users were often not the ones involved in the purchase process of the product, we were looking to ensure the system admins, the target user who would be responsible for installing and administering the solution, understood what the product is and what it provides, as well as explain what the setup process would entail.
This project resulted in a 4-step flow describing the process for installing and setup of the product, as well as explaining concepts such as a storage cache and providing an understanding of why and where you would set one up.
The process employed during this project saw great success in stakeholder involvement and buy-in, in major part due to the testing and feedback loops utilized.
I began working with the team to understand the user flow. This flow provided a starting point for discussions with the team to better grasp the complexity and highlighting areas of question and concern.
After solidifying the flow and functionality around the installation and setup, I began with wireframes to design out the onboarding introduction to the product. Once I had an initial design, I worked with our development, product management and marketing teams to gather feedback as well as get help improving the actual content. With them, I worked thru a number of iterations on the content.
It was determined early in the project that access to users would not be an option, so I identified other internal resources I could use as user proxies. I met with a few experts from our sales team to walk them through the designs, ask them questions and gather their feedback.
Next, I took the design individually to three of our more strategic and leadership roles as a way to both gain feedback, as well as make sure our whole product was in line with their strategic vision and that we were talking to our users in the correct way about it. One of the most important goals for me was to make sure I had buyiin from these stakeholders and to give them a means to contribute to the design details through their input. This proved to be extremely beneficial.
One great takeaway for me on this project was how important it was to work with the marketing department. They are responsible for the story around our product and how the product is presented to our customers, through to the point of sale. With this complex product, I discovered that marketing had very specific language around the offering and a pretty thorough guideline of how to talk about the product and explain it.