Beyond Identity
Device Trust: A Team Effort
Intro
Beyond Identity is an identity security company that began with passwordless MFA with goals to be an all-in-one access management tool.
The company set a strategic move to add new capability Device Trust to expand customers' visibility into employee device postures while helping cut costs being an access management tool with device trust built in.
An ambitious launch plan was set with 4-5 new features to be tested in beta before releasing to customers.
My Partners
CEO (previously CTO) & head of product, main stakeholders (my reporting line)
3 product managers
3+ engineering teams
1 host query subject-matter expert (SME)
1 product marketing manager (PMM)
My Role
As the head of product design, I was tasked to lead my team and bring to life this new capability through several new features:
Device Query
Query Library
Devices Inventory Dashboard
Onboarding Experience
I also had maternity leave coming up in 1.5 quarters and set a coverage plan, with hiring not an option.
Design Team Makeup
2 mid-level designers
1 technical writer
1 player-coach (me)
When Device Trust hit the roadmap, I was managing design resources across multiple offerings.
2 products commanded the most attention:
Product 2: B2B2C, consumer
Smaller design footprint
1 SaaS web app
1 SDK
1 documentation site
Business impact: Fuzzy but promising
Great long-term revenue potential but nascent offering with ambiguous roadmap; 1 customer & 1 pilot program
Design Resourcing
1 designer; I placed a mid-level designer who had demonstrated visual intuition and built institutional knowledge a few years in.
Division of Labor & Approach
As hiring new designers was not an option, I decided to keep all designers stationed as was then.
Device Query & Query Library
Designer: Me
Device Query was the least understood feature across Device Trust, so I took this project.
I also took Query Library, a straightforward concept closely tied with Device Query.
I got approved designs to the B2B designer in time for my mat leave.
Listening to Users:
A Device Response Story
Designer: Me (+ B2B designer with the assist)
While I was out, the B2B designer monitored my designs while maintaining her workload.
The designer made detailed tweaks upon new product requirements and feedback.
When I returned from leave, the work was tested in a beta release. Research uncovered confusion around the query results.
To this, I quickly implemented changes, including framing the experience as "Device Response."
Teamwork: Devices Inventory Dashboard
Designer: B2B designer
The B2B designer also was tasked with device inventory (or "fleet") management.
User needs included a list of unique employee devices and an accompanying dashboard of fleet insights.
The effort provided a set of classic B2B SaaS visual challenges with plenty of real-life examples to reference, all things I considered appropriate for the designer at her level.
Teamwork: Onboarding Experience
Designer: B2B designer (+ B2B2C designer with the assist)
Another classic challenge, this effort was also assigned to the B2B designer.
Additionally, we benefited relying on the other B2B2C designer, who had designed a sign-up flow for the new platform version with the B2B2C offering and where Device Trust would debut.
Midway into the project, we also had the luck to use an onboarding tool, Dopt, promoted by the Growth team.
Teamwork: Upgraded Documentation
Assignee: Senior technical writer (+B2B2C designer with the assist)
Running in parallel with Device Trust was a revamp of our Documentation experience.
The previous docs tool had a myriad of issues that led to an outdated and hack-y experience.
I requested to hire a senior technical writer specifically knowledgable on the latest docs practices.
She revamped the entire docs process to meet today's standards, and in time to publish docs for Device Trust.
Device Trust Prototype
The Design team and I built multiple prototypes to review with partners and stakeholders.
Our prototypes often served as the glue holding the vision together with many feature teams working in silo.
Results
My design & technical writing team delivered a holistic experience as a result of uniting efforts across multiple siloed engineering teams and PMs.
The onboarding guide and docs site empowered users to learn Device Trust independently, cutting down help tickets to sales and customer-facing teams.
These teams were freed up to focus on selling/upselling the new capability to serious prospects and renewing customers.
While I left the company before we could collect hard metrics, Device Trust was a huge achievement for the company in its mission to become an all-in-one, secure-by-design access management tool.
