A new single sign-on service, essential to future cloud products, saw low adoption

Research Question
What was causing the low adoption?

Approach

  • To gather specific details about the user experience, I conducted 23 global 1:1 user interviews with two key user types: buyers and users.

  • Feedback from the interviews indicated potential regional differences and other interesting reasons. To delve deeper into these hypotheses, I analyzed usage data and conducted statistical analyses.

  • Developed detailed case studies in response to the company's request to better understand how different clients are utilizing the company's hardware and software products.

Research Challenge

This research was challenging because the hardware and software was nuanced with different variations. However, it quickly became apparent that most users didn’t recognize these differences and thought the variations were the same.

To work around this issue, I had to ask very specific step-by-step questions on how the user interacted with the technology to determine which variation they used. This challenge provided valuable insights to the company and didn’t stop me from gathering insights.

Findings

The research revealed 12 distinct factors that could potentially impact adoption. To make it easier to respond to the research, I categorized the findings into 3 categories:

  • Factors mostly in the company’s control

  • Factors semi in the company’s control

  • Factors not in the company’s control

A key finding was that many customers used a mix of hardware and software but didn’t distinguish between them. Leading them to expect a universal sign-on experience. However, the company had planned to offer SSO only as a premium feature on the latest premium hardware

Impact

A key finding that wasn’t widely known within the company was the lack of local customer support for non-U.S. customers. This insight led to increased investment in a customer-centric self-help app, a solution I had previously identified as critical for overcoming learning barriers that limit product usage.

The company hadn’t realized how significantly mixed hardware fleets impacted the user experience. To reduce confusion and drive adoption, I recommended enabling SSO across all hardware, a change the company implemented.

While the research was initially requested by a specific team within the company, the findings were deemed universally relevant, leading to a request for a presentation to the broader organization.

"This was a really good interview. Whoever you're working for should be happy they have you."

- User feedback regarding their experience with Savannah