Craig S Miller - Onboarding

Onboarding

Simplifying Vyopta's overly complex customer onboarding process, from hours of hand holding the customer to becoming a quick and easy to use experience. Taking different backend systems and merging them into one for a completely reimagined onboarding process.

My Role

I was the lead product designer working with a team of 10 people that included program managers, software engineers, sales engineers, customer success, product support, IT management and current customers.

Create an account

Add endpoints

Download collector

Finished

Highlights

Greatly improved time to value by getting started in a few minutes.
Led the product management team and collaborated with key stakeholders.
Delivered within one business quarter.
Merged different backend systems into one.
Launched in early 2020, just as the pandemic hit greatly affected our outcome.

Project Scope

Deliver a completely reimagined onboarding process that would be easy to use (in a complicated space), within one business quarter, by taking different backend systems and merging them together.

The Challenge

The current onboarding was really complicated, dedicated internal resources were needed to create and setup new accounts for all customers and then help them understand how to use it.

Users had to first go through a 68 page deployment guide.
Multiple accounts had to be created and different environments were needed to continue setup.
Users would get stuck due to not knowing all the information being asked of them.

Project "Infinity" whiteboard session

Research & Interviews

The first step was researching the current onboarding process by interviewing multiple Software Engineers who built and maintain the current system.
I interviewed the Vyopta team of 20 from sales, marketing, dev ops and product to establish the different customer persona types. Next was interviewing select current customers to understand their experiences.

How the team started the design sprint

How the team ended up

Design Sprint

I facilitated a design sprint with key stakeholders to see how to allow customers to create an account and immediately start using the product. The initial findings:

Most users didn’t know key technical details, this was a major road block.
There was no traditional software installer, you had to access and run DOS prompts and commands to install.
We focused on delivering a key portion of the product to use immediately, creating an entry point into the product.

The high level goals became:

Reduce multiple environment steps
Enable getting started in a few minutes
Track the progress, like ordering a pizza

The Execution

I identified the key areas of the UX design based off of our research findings and broke the project up into the most intuitive sections. I start with sketching things out on paper, then creating basic wireframes, followed up with the core mock ups and finally developing a working prototype.

Create an account

Challenge: Users needed to create 3 separate accounts to enable the creation, grant access and then authenticate.
Solution: We streamlined the process by combining multiple steps, sites, accounts and then automated it by creating and authenticating crucial data in the background.

Create an account

Download collector

Challenge: Customers left their workflow to download and install a data collector by joining a virtual machine, through a remote desktop connection, and also had to know the correct credentials to access it from a MS-DOS prompt.
Solution: We kept the customer in the same workflow and allowed them to easily download and setup the collector. A help section was also available in case there were questions.

Download collector

Add endpoints

Challenge: You would have to go back and login to a different site (most did not know their credentials) and then hunt for endpoints to add. Endpoints are typically video conferencing devices.
Solution: We combined this step within the current workflow and allowed the user to easily see what endpoints were available. A management system allowed users to easily remove and keep track.

Add endpoints

Start using product

Challenge: Users would have to log out of the separate configuration site and then go to the product login page to finally start using the product.
Solution: We kept the user in the same workflow so they could just click on a "Let's go" button to start using the product.

Finished

Outcome & Results

We achieved our goal of delivering within one business quarter. Launched in early 2020, just as the pandemic hit greatly affected our outcome. Most workers stayed home to work remotely (this version of the product evaluates devices in the office only) so it rarely got an opportunity to succeed.

The intuitive installer allowed users to install themselves, and dramatically decreased the time it took to install the collector agent on users devices.
Although moderately used, major parts of Vyopta’s onboarding process were successfully mapped out and developed into other parts of the product.

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My Role

Create an account

Add endpoints

Download collector

Finished

Highlights

Project Scope

Deliver a completely reimagined onboarding process that would be easy to use (in a complicated space), within one business quarter, by taking different backend systems and merging them together.

The Challenge

The current onboarding was really complicated, dedicated internal resources were needed to create and setup new accounts for all customers and then help them understand how to use it.

Users had to first go through a 68 page deployment guide.

Multiple accounts had to be created and different environments were needed to continue setup.

Users would get stuck due to not knowing all the information being asked of them.

Project "Infinity" whiteboard session

Research & Interviews

The first step was researching the current onboarding process by interviewing multiple Software Engineers who built and maintain the current system.

I interviewed the Vyopta team of 20 from sales, marketing, dev ops and product to establish the different customer persona types. Next was interviewing select current customers to understand their experiences.

How the team started the design sprint

How the team ended up

Design Sprint

I facilitated a design sprint with key stakeholders to see how to allow customers to create an account and immediately start using the product. The initial findings:

Most users didn’t know key technical details, this was a major road block.

There was no traditional software installer, you had to access and run DOS prompts and commands to install.

We focused on delivering a key portion of the product to use immediately, creating an entry point into the product.

The high level goals became:

Reduce multiple environment steps

Enable getting started in a few minutes

Track the progress, like ordering a pizza

The Execution

I identified the key areas of the UX design based off of our research findings and broke the project up into the most intuitive sections. I start with sketching things out on paper, then creating basic wireframes, followed up with the core mock ups and finally developing a working prototype.

Create an account

Challenge: Users needed to create 3 separate accounts to enable the creation, grant access and then authenticate.

Solution: We streamlined the process by combining multiple steps, sites, accounts and then automated it by creating and authenticating crucial data in the background.

Create an account

Download collector

Challenge: Customers left their workflow to download and install a data collector by joining a virtual machine, through a remote desktop connection, and also had to know the correct credentials to access it from a MS-DOS prompt.

Solution: We kept the customer in the same workflow and allowed them to easily download and setup the collector. A help section was also available in case there were questions.

Download collector

Add endpoints

Challenge: You would have to go back and login to a different site (most did not know their credentials) and then hunt for endpoints to add. Endpoints are typically video conferencing devices.

Solution: We combined this step within the current workflow and allowed the user to easily see what endpoints were available. A management system allowed users to easily remove and keep track.

Add endpoints

Start using product

Challenge: Users would have to log out of the separate configuration site and then go to the product login page to finally start using the product.

Solution: We kept the user in the same workflow so they could just click on a "Let's go" button to start using the product.

Finished

Outcome & Results

We achieved our goal of delivering within one business quarter. Launched in early 2020, just as the pandemic hit greatly affected our outcome. Most workers stayed home to work remotely (this version of the product evaluates devices in the office only) so it rarely got an opportunity to succeed.

The intuitive installer allowed users to install themselves, and dramatically decreased the time it took to install the collector agent on users devices.

Although moderately used, major parts of Vyopta’s onboarding process were successfully mapped out and developed into other parts of the product.