McAfee Gamer Security
a beach head strategy with a 0 -1 product launch
The story of a 0 -1 product launch
In 2018, the PC gaming market was booming, with McAfee's channel partners—HP, Lenovo, and Dell—launching specialized high-end gaming laptops. Identifying gamers as a beachhead market, McAfee started building a security product tailored for gamers. After considering various options, McAfee's strategy team decided to develop a new offering for this lucrative segment.
To understand gamers' values, needs, and unaddressed pain points, we explored this novel customer segment. We adapted our research methods, initially using qualitative approaches like interviews and observations to tackle the unknowns. Subsequently, surveys helped us understand task prioritization and the severity of pain points. In the solution design phase, we engaged in co-creation workshops and user testing.
Collaborating closely with product teams throughout, we shared key insights and shaped thinking based on customer inputs. Within just 5 months, the Minimum Lovable Product (MLP) was successfully launched. Beta feedback confirmed our success in meeting the specific needs of this previously unfamiliar customer group through continuous learning and iteration.
I personally, through vendors, managed research execution for the product marketing group. We conducted value proposition, pricing and messaging research to refine the launch approach and communication plans.
Read on for the full story.
Internal change was needed:
In 2018, McAfee’s PC group had not built a brand-new product in 20 years. The organization lacked the mindset, processes, and tools to build new user-centric products, release fast, test & learn in the market, and iterate.
My Role:
Research Lead for an embedded cross-functional team
Step 1: Roles, responsibilities, and workflow
To ensure Product, Design and Dev were in lockstep, it was necessary to establish how might we work together. In tandem with the overall program manager, I helped design and conduct workshops to create frameworks for collaboration and decision-making.
Step 2: Generative research to create empathy
Gamers were different from McAfee’s typical users who were older and computer novices. We did contextual inquiry and immersed our teams in a gamer’s world. We did in-home visit, observations. Product managers, Dev and Design undertook competitive analyses, visited gaming conventions, and conferences for gaming designers.
Step 3: Apply learning to product design and feature
We were able to narrow down our target segment from ‘gamers’ to ‘gamers who were moderately tech-savvy and would appreciate an easy-to-use tool to improve PC performance’.
We created and socialize personas to build team alignment.
We created journey maps of what our target gaming segment would do on a PC just before, during, and after gaming. With this view, the team could write well-informed user stories and success criteria.
We ran surveys to clearly prioritise and size the pain points we needed to solve for this target segment.
To design the solution, Product managers ran ideation sessions. Then we ran co-creation sessions with gamers to refine our product feature and design direction.
Step 4: Build iteratively
Ran design and POC hackathons at a regular cadence when tackling contentious opinions or difficult technical challenges.
Influenced our executive sponsor and senior leaders to join regular user feedback sessions for design and demos.
Step 5: Beta and then release to market
Paid betas are a luxury and most products have to be comfortable with big releases after small internal tests. Since McAfee planned to make a big splash with its Gamer Security product, our executive sponsor helped the team find resources to run a 300 person external beta program. I worked with the beta vendor to be able to run surveys and conduct 5 user interviews a week to get rich user feedback and shape improvements.
Outcome:
The product was released to the market in time for Consumer Electronics Show in January 2019.
The product experience got positive reviews in magazines like PC Mag.
Alas! our competitive landscape changed. McAfee’s PC OEM partners added new capabilities to their laptops which made an Gamer Security unnecessary add on.
Till date 5,000 units of this product have been sold. It is now offered as a free incentive to purchase McAfee Total Protection.
Empathise: Persona
Ideation, prototyping to MVP release: Evolution of the product from design thinking workshop to release, 7 months later
Beta program: survey data collected to add color to behavioural data
Participants (n=59)
Beta program: interviews and survey data helped get feedback
Although plenty who felt they understood how MGS impacts their gaming experience (25/59), there were some who struggled.
Many asked for a comparison w/ baseline, while a few would have likely appreciated guidance.
Review:
PC Mag, 2019
Everybody tells you to install antivirus on all your computers, and mostly doing so is no big deal. But the first time an antivirus pop-up on your gaming rig spoils a super-combo, you're likely to turn off that protection permanently. The designers at McAfee feel that pain, so they've developed McAfee Gamer Security just for gamers. It combines a super-light antivirus component that never interrupts gameplay with a set of boosts aimed at making your gaming experience speedier and smoother. Its stripped-down feature set did well in testing, but it's hard to picture a gamer shelling out cash for this limited product.
PC Gamer, 2021
McAfee Gamer Security knows when you're in a game, and it will stop anything running in the background as you play. It makes gaming a priority for system resources, mutes notifications, and anything else that would interrupt your fun. It's great for someone who wants to know they are protected from all the usual bad actors online but don't want to tinker around with any settings. McAfee Gamer Security does it all for you.