01. The Challenge
AVG Business Protection is a security solution for small business owners to protect their devices.
- The goal for the product was to provide enterprise level security while designing a product that was simple to use for anyone regardless of technical proficiency.
- Small business owners do not take the proper steps to ensure their company’s protection with most not realizing they need it.
- They also do not possess the technical prowess to troubleshoot problems relating to their network.
- Most small business owners found it hard to keep track of how many servers and devices needed protection and few did not know how many they had in their network.
Goal 1:
Design a product that “just works” without getting too technical
Challenge 1:
We had no research on what level of security small business users needed and their level of technical expertise to manage a security portal.
Goal 2:
Give an overall sense of security without the need to download or install too many additional components.
Challenge 2:
It was important we designed a solution that allowed users to easily understand how to deploy the antivirus security solution to their network of devices.
02. Research
Collecting qualitative data
Competitive analysis
I researched other security solutions to help inform what the current market look like and what solutions small business owners had to choose from and conducted a SWOT analysis.
Findings:
Problem
No true security solution exists for small business owners. The only solutions that existed for small business(SMB) owners were either consumer AV solutions or medium to large enterprise level security solutions.
Solution
Design a product that provides robust end to end security for a SMB owners network of devices while being easy and transparent to use.
Problem
Enterprise security solutions for SMB owners are complex and full of technical jargon. The expectation is that anyone using these services has a decent background in IT.
Solution
Design a solution that is unambiguous by following the standards of consumer AV applications and can self-manage itself unless critical.
User Interviews
We recruited users using an agency to understand more about their needs and the frustrations they face with current solutions on the market today.
Findings:
- Over 20% of small business owners did not currently use any security solution and were not aware of the potential risks.
- Most owners used security solutions that were meant for consumers and not business’
- Owners felt confused and nervous about their network security. They knew they needed something robust but were often anxious about setting up a security solution for their network of devices.
- SMB owners felt like they didn’t have dedicated support and didn’t know who to contact if there was a problem.
03. Design iterations
We wanted to experiment with the idea of cards or tiles on a dashboard screen that would contain the most important information that a user would be interested in.
Considering users were unsure of how many devices and licenses they had in their network we felt displaying them on the main dashboard would help them understand just how many devices were protected.
After testing the initial designs with users, one of the key findings was that they wanted a quick way to tell if they were secure or not. We decided to add a graphic to show that and later became a focal point of our design
We moved the status icon to the center of the dashboard and made it the focal point of the design. We still weren’t completely happy with the layout and felt adding more color could further help users understand the status of their network.
Through testing we also decided to add a ‘Support’ tile to the dashboard so users had quick access to contact us for support.
04. Final Design
Features of AVG Business Protection
- Dashboard that shows important information front and center including their overall status of their network
- A tile to get support from AVG in case of any questions they might have,
- A simple settings screen where users can customize the amount and type of alerts users receive. We set defaults and have certain required notifications to keep users informed.
- The notifications screen displays all active and past notifications separated by date. Easy to understand icons can quickly convey severity of the notification.
- Clicking on individual notifications show more detail and users have access to actions via a 3 dot menu to help resolve the alert.
- Devices details screen follows the same design as the notification details screen where devices are listed alphabetically. Clicking on individual devices shows additional information and actions for that device that can be performed remotely.
