Samsung KNOX
How MIGHT WE HELP A busy professional improve their Work / Life Balance?
Business Objective: Samsung is competing with Apple in high priced smartphones market. With Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) becoming a critical workforce trend, new Android mobile devices were not sufficiently secure for enterprise applications and professional customers. But when security was installed, it impacted device performance and customer productivity.
My Role: I led a small UX team responsible for redesign of Samsung KNOX. Our mission was to make secure mobile phones, tablets and applications quick and friendly based on enterprise requirements, government regulations and individual preferences.
Results: Successful launch and rapid growth on GooglePlay. 10,000,000 + customers signed up on Google Play to download and use KNOX within a year.
STAKEHOLDERS COLLABORATION
Samsung is struggling to compete with Apple’s premium secure devices.
I was part of an International team reporting to "Central UX" in Seoul, South Korea. The team in Seoul decided to focus on the competitive United States market because American consumers can afford the premium phones and are willing to pay more for better security and performance. Samsung is competing with Apple in a market where they’re controlling both software and hardware. Samsung is Google's largest OEM partner and has to make it as good as or better than Apple because premium customers have higher expectations for software/hardware integration.
NEW PRODUCT FAILING BADLY: Samsung’s original secure mobile device product was designed for military/government customers - a small, niche market - and the product-market fit was poor for demanding professional consumers. The product, a software/hardware integrated platform called Samsung KNOX (like Fort Knox, which is supposed to be very secure), was failing badly. We needed to reassess the strategy to accomplish our business objective.
USABILITY EVALUATION: We recruited potential customers to evaluate the onboarding and first-time experience. The feedback was that they didn’t understand why KNOX phones with extra security had to be so complicated.
SAMSUNG KNOX V1.0 first-time experience USABILITY TESTING
EARLY IN THE B2(B2C) PRODUCT CYCLE: Before we figure out the design we have to understand what is wrong and how to improve it. We invited enterprise corporate customers and professional employees to test our flows. We hosted workshops to talk about their needs.
CUSTOMER NEED FINDING SUMMARY
CUSTOMER RESEARCH AND STRATEGY
Customers don't want mobile device security to come at the cost of convenience.
We considered two potential target customers - one cares about security and not convenience, the other cares about convenience and not security. We chose to focus on the second of these customers and a platform that would promote security without compromising convenience.
PERSONA AND CUSTOMER JOURNEY: Consumers use their phones and tablets to see a preview of communication. Their email, their text messages, their calendar reminders.
BLACKBOARD: Work/Life Balance on a Secure Mobile Device
TARGET CUSTOMER RESEARCH GOALS: Understand how professional customers use their mobile phones. Understand why what we have right now isn’t working for the customers.
COGNITIVE ERGONOMICS: When people use their mobile phones for work they have to refer to them very frequently. They don’t want to constantly be stuck waiting for extra authentication to unlock their secure files.
KEY INSIGHT: “I want to be secure. And it should not be complicated.”
COGNITIVE ERGONOMICS: When people use their mobile phones for work they have to refer to them very frequently. They don’t want to constantly be stuck waiting for extra authentication to unlock their secure files.
KEY INSIGHT: “I want to be secure. And it should not be complicated.”
Image: How often I use my secure communication
CONCEPT / VISION
Customers have embraced the idea of work-life balance in one mobile device.
The critical requirement was to provide easy and secure access to professional applications from a personal phone operating system. We wanted to make the experience easy to access so that customers didn’t have to live between two phones. We would give them a secure folder on their phone within which they could conveniently and securely access what they needed.
KNOX SECURE FOLDER: Folder widget is easy to access and it’s also different From the rest of the phone. Flesh it out with navigation from notifications in between open applications as a fully featured platform
JOBS TO DO / storyboards / MVP experiments
INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE: low fidelity flows and navigation
INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE: low fidelity flows and navigation
JOBS TO DO / DESIGN PRINCIPLES / DESIGN SYSTEM
The brand is premium security and performance, so the design needs to be transparent and second nature, practically invisible.
AT A GLANCE SECURE NOTIFICATIONS: Secure work apps should be available at a glance. Notifications are abbreviated so if someone is prying, they can’t decipher secure communication.
SECURE SENSE OF PLACE: At the same time as making it secure we wanted to make it different so that people don’t confuse secure and personal communication.
KNOX SETUP: A walk-through onboarding and personal priorities setup flow.
SERVICE AND SUPPORT: Customer service communication to get feedback so that we may figure out how to serve them better in context.
DESIGN SYSTEM
PRINCIPLES
UI WITH SPECIFICATIONS
PRINCIPLES
UI WITH SPECIFICATIONS
LAUNCH AND FOLLOW UP
Doing more research and creating new products to improve security and satisfaction.
QUALITATIVE IN-PERSON TESTING: We're testing with a small carefully selected group that represents a diverse group of professional customers that will scale to millions of users.
QUANTITATIVE RESEARCH: Google analytics quantitative research in addition to our
FIX THE BUGS ON GOOGLE PLAY STORE: Soft launch follow up to comments and problems as they come up in the Google Play Store.
FIX THE BUGS ON GOOGLE PLAY STORE: Soft launch follow up to comments and problems as they come up in the Google Play Store.
Conduct more research and create new products to make premium phones more secure and convenient, such as biometric authentication, proximity device unlocking, secure financial transactions, etc.
New customer walk through and follow up surveys contribute to long-term satisfaction. Measured at 30, 60 and 90 days.
We want to solve individual problems for banking, engineering, healthcare, government and military.
BANKING: Trusted UI for large transactions
HEALTH: Instant unlock with Samsung gear
EVERYONE: Biometric authentication
BANKING: Trusted UI for large transactions
HEALTH: Instant unlock with Samsung gear
EVERYONE: Biometric authentication
ORGANIZATION DESIGN \ PROPOSAL TO ACCOMPLISH STRATEGY
As we were figuring out the design we had to understand what's wrong and how to improve it. We invited enterprise corporate customers and professional employees to test our flows. We hosted workshops to talk about their needs.
B2B2C UX ORGANIZATION DESIGN STRATEGY
SAMSUNG KNOX CASE STUDY: HOW TO TURN A COMPLEX AND FRUSTRATING CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE INTO A SIMPLE AND CONVENIENT PRODUCT THAT MILLIONS OF PROFESSIONALS WANT TO USE
1. EVALUATE: Interview stakeholders to uncover their priorities, and conduct usability/need finding research. Discover how customers want to be able to use their mobile devices, and why the current product isn’t working for them.
2. PLAN: Focus on professional customers to address their work life balance
3. EXECUTE: Visualize the tasks customers are attempting to complete on their mobile devices, plan experiments and test assumptions to reveal a core loop that satisfies their requirements and improves engagement
2. PLAN: Focus on professional customers to address their work life balance
3. EXECUTE: Visualize the tasks customers are attempting to complete on their mobile devices, plan experiments and test assumptions to reveal a core loop that satisfies their requirements and improves engagement