Securing Product Usability

Our client – a global tech giant and the builder of the world’s largest search platform – drives innovation across a wide range of Internet-related services, from online advertising to smartphone and application development. While they’re experts in a multitude of high-tech disciplines, they came to Filter for help with their new identity verification and protection solution.

This breakthrough program was specifically created for high-value personnel like journalists, top executives, and political professionals, and provides a level of security above standard 2-factor authentication. When our client launched this program with less than overwhelming success, they realized they needed to conduct further consumer research to make improvements to unlock its full market potential.

Filter began this project with generative research to better clarify the value and purpose of the platform and why it wasn’t landing strongly with its target users. This research provided clear insights on how target users perceive data risks, and how they behave and make product decisions based on those beliefs.

Working from a program plan developed by our senior research consultant, our team of specialized researchers also used observational research to study how customers interacted with the security program in real-time. They cataloged points of both confusion and clarity throughout their experiences, then supplemented this data with additional qualitative insights gained through in-depth personal interviews. Ultimately our team revealed specific user pain points, determining that product design and usability issues were deterring customers from using the program.

Working alongside our client enabled our UX teams to work quickly and efficiently to diagnose the how the features and benefits needed to be modified for greater user adoption. Filter’s user insights and analyses informed our client’s go-to-market strategy, helping them align product positioning and messaging to user needs in a way that significantly improved product interest and adoption. Meanwhile, our UX research provided specific design direction that helped the client improve the onboarding experience – improvements that ultimately reduced their high product-abandonment rate by a considerable degree.