Modernizing risk assessment software for auditors 🧑‍💻

HOW I Increased software sales with a redesign

Product Description: AppDetectivePRO quickly scans databases and Big Data to identify security risks and configuration errors, helping businesses prevent data breaches and service disruptions. It provides immediate insights into the security and compliance of data stores, both on-premise and in the cloud.

My Impact as the Lead Designer & Researcher

I redesigned an intuitive and flexible audit tool tailored for field auditors' unique challenges, increasing software sales and customer retention.

As the lead designer and researcher, I managed the redesign of this desktop software from start to finish, including hiring and managing a contract designer to help me meet the project timeline, ensuring cohesive and high-quality design outcomes.

I collaborated closely with the product owners, the contract designer I hired, and the remote engineering team in Argentina to conduct user research and address pain points to ensure a seamless experience.

The Problem

The poor UI and UX of the existing product was causing the company to lose sales and existing customers to competitors.

This product hadn’t been touched by a designer and wasn’t addressing user needs.

The Goals

To increase product sales of their risk assessment tool and appeal to auditors, stakeholders wanted to update the audit software to include the latest industry standards while improving the user experience and visual appeal.

Learning What Auditors Need

I conducted comprehensive research to understand the unique challenges faced by field auditors performing security audits for businesses to assess risk.

I met with auditors in person and online to understand their pain points, needs, motivations, and goals. The responses from one of my user interviews are below.

User Interview Takeaways:

I learned that auditors need a flexible tool that can function offline.

• Auditors perform on-site inspections and often work offline.

• Procedures include automatic data scans and manual inspections of the physical business property, requiring interaction with various employees.

• Each audit requires a unique preparation plan with customizable reports to meet specific customer needs.

Mapping the Functionality & Hierarchy

This project was a huge undertaking with a steep learning curve, but I dove in, creating comprehensive diagrams to assist my understanding and aid in designing.

To wrap my head around the direction of the product and get buy-in from stakeholders and engineers, I created information architecture diagrams, user workflows, and visual explanations to understand where we were and where we wanted to go.

Existing Software:

• Separate workflow for manual questions versus automatic scan checks.

• Static generic reports.

New Direction:

• Manage manual (inspection and interview questions) and automatic scan checks within a single custom policy.

• Create custom manual checks during the policy setup.

• Generate customized reports.

Checking Out the Competition

Before creating wireframes, I reviewed similar audit and desktop products, but found their user experience and visual appeal also lacking.

Rethinking the Product from Scratch

I oversaw the iterative design process, creating iterative sketches and wireframes before passing final designs to the contractor to visually refine, ensuring a cohesive design system.

Samples from my wireframe exploration of how auditors might create custom policies and input their manual check answers.

To accommodate different user preferences, I provided both list and graph options for viewing results.

I collaborated with the engineering team to display policy results in an editable tree structure, utilizing a drag-and-drop data grid control with grouping capabilities via DevExtreme UI components. This solution met auditors' requests to customize result grouping and generate reports from their custom screen views.

I updated the generated reports to display a mix of text and graphics, organizing content hierarchically.

I oversaw the contract designer as he transformed my wireframes into high-resolution mockups.

I guided the contract designer to create a custom set of icons for the product.

Fast-paced Collaboration

Due to the quick timeline, the dev team built the product concurrently from my functional wireframes so they could test it while we refined the visuals.

Since we didn’t have a dedicated front-end developer, I oversaw the contract designer who styled the front-facing UI with Microsoft Expression Blend.

This is an early sample of what the dev team passed to us before applying our visual styles.

The Final Impact

The end product was intuitive, flexible, and tailored for auditors' unique challenges, increasing software sales and delighting customers.

Our audit customers were extremely happy with the updated product as it satisfied their needs and was a pleasure to use. View a YouTube video demonstration of the product.