Mounika Konidala 

SUMMARY:

•We have observed that Citrix customers are using multiple tools to analyze security threats and detect anomalous or malicious user behavior for the users data. However, Citrix customers have to modify/add an extra feature to the product to fit in their environment which supports end-point detection.

 

OBJECTIVE:

Build a new product that deals with Security threats for Citrix products data --Identify the users thoughts on the concept, needs and requirements in the product, and understand the use cases that we need to build for V1 product.

 

Research Goal:

- Users thoughts on the Concept.

- Use cases

- Needs/requirements

- Understand the market

 

Research methodologies used in the entire process:

I have used various methodologies to gather information about the concept and how to build the product to fit in users needs along with business goals.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

PROCESS:

I have conducted research sessions in various areas:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

1. USER INTERVIEWS

The focus of the first phase is to understand the “Security Analysts day in a life” and determine user needs we want to meet in the version 1 product release.

 

During the interviews, we want to understand the current users work process, tools they use, and how they identify the security threats and malicious behavior of the end user. We want to refine the concept idea and prioritize the features they expect on the version.

 

1.1 Overview

We created a screener to recruit the participants and reached out to professionals working in consulting, Finance, IT/Tech. These participants dealt with configuring the use case on a regular basis. We had 77 responses from screener and blogs and we interviewed 10 people for the first round.

 

Outcomes:

Persona:

I build a persona based on the first round of user interviews

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Findings:

Common challenges security engineers face during fixes. Solving issues for end-users while dealing with multiple teams to prioritize the issue

- Need to clarify on the context of the threat from the dashboard

- Research team understand the separation of security items across different teams from the internal

- Most of their time is spent on troubleshooting and finding out the reason for the attack

- Figure out why something is happening, how it is happening, and what it is doing

- Manually record user behavior incidents

 

Challenges:

- Find out the participants with the right profile. I had interviewed a total of 10 people, but among the few people are not the right participants.

 

What did I learn:

- Even if we recruit internally we need to develop a screener to recruit and always filter people to meet your target personas

 

What would I have done differently:

- Screening the participants before I talk with them will save some amount of time and can use that amount of time in the analyzing part

 

2 Focus group:

I have conducted this focus group session at the conference we (Citrix) conducted every year for all our customers to showcase our brand new products or features adding to the existing products. I have recruited the people who are attending the event and set up the focus group session:

 

Overview:

Invite companies to partner with us in shaping Citrix Security Analytics service research activities. Get high-level impressions on the designs/service. 

To develop a deeper understanding of the needs and pain points from the users of the product currently use:

- What does their current experience with Citrix products and any competitor tool they use in production?

- What are their pain points?

- What unmet needs do they have?

- What is working well?

- What are their thoughts on the first look of the product?

 

Outcomes:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Findings:

- Customers saw the value and benefits of Citrix Analytics Service but were still confused on (aspects of) the Analytics service due to the following reasons:

– Missing information (lack of introduction) about the risk score values - Eg: How did we weigh those risk score values? 

- Customers need more clarity on FTU experience

       - How this tool works unique? , and

       - Source of data and risk indicators 

- New features requested

      - Customize option - dashboard, risk indicators values, and alert notification

 

 

Challenges:

- Limited time frame - only one week

- Negotiation with the product owner and marketing team for the value of UX research methodologies to conduct at the conference

 

 

What did I learn:

- Focus group was excellent for understanding the emergent behaviors that were embedded in participants’ daily lives. This allowed me to gain a more comprehensive perspective on the end to end interaction of the products and the workflow.  It was also an effective way to gather data not only on the concept of the product and also how users likes/dislikes in the current products they have been using. 

 

 

What would I have done differently:

- Few customers want to show up for the research session after they heard about the product at the conference but I can not able to accommodate them and gathered their information and contacted them after a week. Therefore, I had to contact them after a week, which greatly decreased the interest level of participation in the research study. It would be helpful to put an extra spot to sign up anyone for the research session at the conference.

 

 

3 PROTOTYPE TESTING:

Objective:

Validate the value proposition, features, and designs for Analytics. 

 

- To gain end-to-end service feedback from a larger population (Samsung employees)

- To identify user issues and bugs prior to launch

- To qualify the service via a broader spectrum of users, use cases and geographies

- To test potential marketing messages

 

Outcome:

Findings:

- Navigation issues to the users

- More use cases to add up 

- Users not able to understand the hidden items in the UI

 

- Usability study report with 17 detailed findings of user pain points and corresponding recommendations for the redesign

- The impact was to direct the business development team about what worked and what did not in terms of user flows and web interfaces and incorporate research findings into the design by presenting design recommendations to the design team. 

 

Result: People liked the final dashboard look!