The start

McAfee offered protection through disconnected products. Users were encouraged to purchase the product and let it run on their machines. No attempt was made to explain the various protection features, engage users, and get them to interact with the product. Most users thought McAfee only built Anti-virus. McAfee was losing relevance and market share.

Changes had to be made.

• Users had to understand our protection features and engage with them.

My Role

UX Design Leader reporting to VP, Design. I led one of several cross-functional groups of designers and researchers.

The challenge

We needed to figure out the right solution to meet both user needs and business needs. We also had to keep legal constraints in mind.

User needs

A user wants to live a relatively carefree digital existence. Most only want to know ‘enough’ to stay safe.

The majority don’t really know what the various protection features do.

• ‘Why do I need to add privacy features when I already have security features? ‘

• ‘I’ve heard of hackers but what on earth is the Dark Web and why would I need to run a scan of the Dark Web? ‘

Business needs

Conversion models have established the more a user engages with the product, the higher the likelihood of conversion from a free trial to a paid product. Therefore, McAfee’s business partners now wanted users to engage with more protection features again and again. Gone was the install, set it and forget it days!

Legal constraints

The legal team needs us to get user permission to use their personal information to run scans (using email for Dark web scans to identify breaches/footprint).

The journey to find the right solution:

• To serve both user and business needs, McAfee needed to provide protection features the user cared about, in a way that the user understood what the feature did. Then, it was hoped, the user would see the value and want to engage and re-engage with a feature.

• Designers put 7+ protection capabilities in front of users in the order of importance our research told us users valued. Sigh! users turned around and said, ‘Great but why do I need all of these? And why do I need to engage with these again? Can’t I just use one that’s easy to set up and then give you permission to protect me and be done with it?’

• We decided to brainstorm, ideate, and co-create our way out of this situation. Our solution had to explain our protection features, why each one was needed. Then we had to incentivize the user to engage with the features they valued, actively, again and again!

Solution

The solution we finally landed on, is a Protection Score!

The score would help users understand the state of their security. Around it, we would provide visual cues to nudge the user to act. As a reward for action, users would see a higher score.

Building the thing right

As we started building the solution, we had to create rules on how it would behave based on user expectations.

Characteristics of the Protection Score

• It is more than a graphic and number, it is the status of a person

• It helps us pivot to a person-centered approach while remaining device-aware

• The same score will be visible across all devices the user has installed McAfee on.

• Action cards to improve the score will be bubbled up to the user based on personalization and context. We will not surface up unimportant messages.

  • UX and PM learned how complex building machine learning-based personalization tech is when our designs had to be redone as they were not immediately feasible. These designs will form part of a longer-term release roadmap.

• Actions taken by users will result in a real-time change to the score to maximize gratification.

  • Analytics is playing a big role in proving the need to invest in technology that allows the score to change in real-time response to a user action.

Outcome

McAfee Protection Center, a small browser-based protection service, using the Score and cues has been launched in 32 countries.

• 879,000 active users in October 2020.

• 62% enrolled in 1 protection feature and acted on suggestions more than once.

The Protection Score is being positioned as a differentiator in the highly commoditized consumer security product space.

Reviews

https://www.trustedreviews.com/news/mcafees-new-app-gives-you-a-security-protection-score-4168667

https://www.itvoice.in/mcafee-redefines-security-with-first-of-its-kind-consumer-protection-score-and-launches-unified-experiences-across-platforms-for-online-protection