UpGuard CyberRisk

A desktop application that allows businesses to monitor their external and 3rd party vendors’ security. 🕵🏽

Problem

How might we improve visibility of vendor and external risk?

My role

I was the sole design contributor on this project.

Key business results

Problem definition

We heard from users and buyers that they simply did not have visibility into their external IT landscape and 3rd party vendors. 

We saw in the news that Google China and Target (to name a few) were breached due to a 3rd party.

So let's just help security teams assess the security of 3rd parties 🥳

User Research

Prior to starting UGCR, we conducted interviews with ten individuals about their lives in IT and Security Operations.

We learned a lot about how these teams work together to keep systems secure and operational.

This knowledge was invaluable when crafting the critical user journeys and scoping the MVP of UpGuard CyberRisk.

Scoping a MVP

We started by scoping the minimum feature set that might solve the problems our users reported.

Mocks & prototypes

Using Invision and Sketch, I rolled up a quick prototype to test and iterate our ideas. Often, this was a daily task.

Regretfully, you can't see any of the raw work because I don't have it, so here are some GIFs of the actual product. I’m sorry. 😢

Adding new features

After launching the initial product, our product roadmap was driven by sales. During a sales call, potential customers would ask for a certain feature. We would identify the problem and build a solution.

For example, a potential customer asked for the ability to manage vendor questionnaires. The CPO and I then researched how that aspect of vendor analysis fit into the critical user journey we had so far. We sought to understand pain points and frustrations of this part of the workflow.

Then we scoped the feature into a two-week-sized chunk, designed, and launched in two weeks. To measure success, we asked customers or the potential customers for feedback and then iterated. Success often meant we landed a new deal and on-boarded new teams.

Conclusion

UpGuard CyberRisk was the very first enterprise product that I designed largely by myself from scratch. It will always hold a special place in my heart 💗

In case you forgot the results:

• Two most profitable quarters in company history, $500K in revenue & 100 users (from cool places like USC, Fidelity, and NextCapital to name a few)

• 72% of customers used what they bought

• We actually did a v2 on several pages

• The design system worked!

Lastly, over the course of designing this product, I laid off my entire team and took on their work 💔

I know how to hustle hard under adversity for my users and my team.