CASE STUDY
Workspace ONE Access
ADOPTION INITIATIVE

EMPLOYERVMware End User Computing

PRODUCTWorkspace ONE Access

STAKEHOLDERSPM, UX, ENG Leadership

DATEMar 2020 - Oct 2020

BUSINESS

CONTEXT

What is VMware all about?

Before I jump in to the case study, I thought a little bit of context about my most recent employer and the products I worked on would be helpful.

According to the VMware corporate website, they “streamline the journey for organizations to become digital businesses that deliver better experiences to their customers and empower employees to do their best work. Our software spans App Modernization, Cloud, Networking & Security and Digital Workspace”.

If that sounds like a lot of jargon, the important thing to understand is that VMware distributes tech solutions that power the IT industry. The products tend to be both incredibly powerful, and really complex.

The division of VMware I worked in is called End User Computing, or EUC for short. Not coincidentally, EUC is also the industry name of a functional area of IT that is responsible for managing employees' digital experience at work.

What is Workspace ONE?

The Workspace ONE platform is VMware's suite of apps, services, and infrastructure that provide its enterprise IT customers a full stack solution for digital employee experience.

The platform's wide range of capabilities and use cases are generally categorized as: physical device management, virtual desktop management, app management, email management, content management, endpoint security, compliance, and access control.

The WS1 Platform is an evolution of a series of independent solutions that have grown together as VMware innovations and strategic acquisitions. Though it is marketed and sold as a unified platform, the current architecture requires manual integration of its independent parts for customers who want to leverage its full potential.

...and what about Workspace ONE Access?

As illustrated on the right, the WS1 platform breaks down into five core components.

Each of these components has a discrete admin console UI and associated backend infrastructure that drives a particular aspect of the total Workspace ONE feature set. By deploying a combination of these components, customers can progressively enhance their employees' digital experience.

Workspace ONE Access — the subject of this case study — enables identity and access management capabilities such as a single sign on, conditional access, and employee app catalog. These concepts enable great things for both IT teams and employees alike – IT gets a way to optimize and automate a critical aspect of security, and end users are able to seamlessly access the apps, data, and other resources they need when and where they need them.

The Access product was built from the ground up by VMware – initially to compete with identity providers (IDPs) like Okta, Ping, and Microsoft ADFS, though that strategy quickly pivoted to an "identity brokering" tack as it became clear that VMware was not equipped to compete head on with established IDPs.

Since launching WS1 Access in 2017, its forward progress has been hindered by a series of critical customer escalations and shifts in business strategy. While Access holds enormous potential value for its users, the combination of a confusing product story (what the heck is an identity broker?!?), technical complexity, and general lack of IaM expertise among the EUC admin community has contributed to low adoption of Workspace ONE Access.

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Customers repeatedly ask for a simplified platform model. Further, VMware's core business strategy depends on self-sufficient users to achieve success at market.

— The Self Guided Adoption E2E Story

PROJECT

OVERVIEW

The Access Adoption Initiative

In early 2020, EUC executive leadership resolved to address the underperforming adoption rate of Access by forming a cross-functional task force spanning Product, Sales, Marketing, Customer Success, and Professional Services organizations.

I was tapped to lead the user centered design workstream with the support of my team of 4 UX specialists and another team of 3 product designers.

Problem Statement

Product leadership was struggling to understand the root causes of what had become a constant negative buzz in the field around WS1 Access.

As agile, engineering-driven organizations tend to do—the Access team had been methodically triaging surface level symptoms reported by customers for a couple years with some positive results. That said, there was a prevailing sense that they were missing something fundamental in the feedback, and when you stepped back, their methodical approach looked more like running in place than progressing toward a destination.

The newly hired Senior Director of product over Access suggested they take a new approach and ask a UX thinker to parse the inputs. I was able to provide some quick returns on that ask through some critical dialog with the internal user-base. From there we could see there was a lot of potential with continued exploration.

My Role

My role on the project was a hybrid of team leadership, project management, and hands on research, analysis, and IA design.

The individual contributors on my team were responsible for driving many of the deliverables described in this case study. As the lead on the project and as their manager, I collaborated closely with them to guide their approach, coordinate timelines, and resolve blockers. Given the depth of the problem space, I also took up a pretty full slate of tactical work myself.

The OKRs that follow below provide specific details about the structure and intended outcomes of my engagement.

Case Study Contents

Key Challenges

Resource constraints

  • Limited access to customers
  • No telemetry data
  • Limited / unreliable usage data
  • Minimal UXR tools
  • No automated benchmarking capability

Narrow UX mindset on cross-functional team*

Competing priorities

Complex dependencies

* See the Design Process section below for more detail about “Narrow UX”.

Objectives and Key Results

I worked with UX and PM leadership to define the following OKRs for the user-centered design workstream.

OGather and socialize an objective view of the Access customer experience.

KR1Build a design partners community and establish dialog with users to understand their needs of WS1 Access.

KR2Conduct product and competitive analysis to understand strengths, weaknesses, and constraints of WS1 Access.

KR3Synthesize and maintain a current view of findings.

KR4Socialize findings with cross-functional product and executive leadership teams.

O2Contribute to product design roadmap, highlighting improved usability and adoptability of WS1 Access

KR1Write data-driven user stories with supporting requirements and business value.

KR2Collaborate with PM and ENG to identify short-term wins that can be achieved in 2H 2020.

KR3Collaborate with PM to articulate a long-term customer-centered vision for Access in context of the greater WS1 platform.

O3Conceptualize and validate solution designs; guide implementation according to research data.

KR1Create concept designs that demonstrate proposed short and long-term product design enhancements.

KR2Conduct user validation in parallel to current development track in preparation for upcoming PORs (QoQ).

KR3Participate in tactical scrum ceremonies to socialize findings, shape design requirements.

KR3Provide IA, content strategy, and user research support to tactical teams.

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The documentation Drew and team produced became a critical tool for building our roadmap and communicating our execution plan ... his contributions to the current strategic direction of Access have been invaluable.

— Doris Yang, Senior Director Product Managment

DESIGN

One of the big challenges we faced is the inertia of “narrow UX” practice that is created by VMware’s engineering-centric culture.

PROCESS

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I designed project plans according to this modified version of the tri-track agile framework to ensure important UX activities like research and testing could happen without disruption to delivery timelines.

COLLABORATION

The full scope of the Access Adoption Initiative was a cross-discipline effort. My team (UX Core Services / UXCS) had regular touchpoints with UX, PM, and ENG counterparts. I also led an effort to establish and maintain an active design partners community across the network of field teams.

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The UXCS team's contributions have become an integral part of the Access UX process. Drew is a wonderful partner to work with, and I'm certain his objective methods and data-driven recommendations are building positive trends in the product.

— Annalisa Reccio, Sr. UX Manager

SCOPE OF WORK

UNDERSTAND

ALIGN + DEFINE

IDEATE

ITERATE

LOCK

REVIEW + TRACK

This Gantt chart shows an overview of the team’s focus areas by phase of the E2E design process throughout the 8 month project.

Please note, the chart displays all activities taken up in the Access Adoption Initiative by default. Click one of the colored process bands above to filter activities.

All Activities

Understand Phase

Purpose: determine whether and why a design problem exists, establish empathy for people and context, and expose fundamental questions to explore in the Align + Define phase.

Intended Outcomes: increased awareness of the general shape of the design problem, especially regarding the customers' goals and challenges.

Understand Phase Activities

Align + Define Phase

Purpose: expand on the awareness gathered in the Understand phase towards a more concretely defined set of problem statements that product designers and key stakeholders can begin to act upon.

Intended Outcomes: shared perspective about the design problem, audience, and broad KPIs that will indicate degree of success. High-level guidance and initial proposals are captured in preparation for concept design cycles.

Align + Define Phase Activities

Ideate Phase

Purpose: generate conceptual designs that give form to multiple hypothetical solutions to the problem statements from the Align + Define phase. Continue to gather perspective through critical dialog and analysis activities.

Intended Outcomes: the team's aligned understanding has been mobilized – creative problem solving has exposed an approach to solving the design problem in a way that meets user needs.

Ideate Phase Activities

Iterate Phase

Purpose: pressure test the conceptual designs generated in the Ideate phase by increasing fidelity to account for the full range of practical use cases. Iterate on the designs as additional user-centered requirements are discovered through user testing.

Intended Outcomes: one or more viable solutions to the user-centered and business problems that accounts for known technical constraints.

Iterate Phase Activities

Lock Phase

Purpose: continue to iterate and add fidelity to the design solution in collaboration with business and engineering stakeholders to account for technical constraints, edge-cases, and other detailed requirements.

Intended Outcomes: a detailed development spec is built that accounts for user, business, and technology requirements.

Lock Phase Activities

Review + Track Phase

Purpose: maintain awareness of how the solution is being used in production – gather data and insights that quantify performance against KPIs, and determine if action is required to optimize or pivot the solution.

Intended Outcomes: ongoing iteration in response to existing and new user behavior relative to the design solution.

Review + Track Phase Activities

  • Workflow Audit + Analysis
  • Use Case Audit + Analysis
  • Documentation Audit
  • Internal User Interviews
  • OOB Standards Workshop
  • IA Inventory + Analysis
  • Customer Interviews
  • Content Council
  • Policy Usability Test
  • Directory Analysis
  • Error Message Analysis
  • IA Concept Design
  • Customer Journey Map Development
  • User Mgt. Analysis
  • Error Index Concept
  • Persona Development
  • IA Card Sort
  • User Mgt. IA Concept
  • In Product Feedback
  • E2E Story Development
  • Component Health Survey
  • People Search User Research
  • North Star Design
  • Partners Survey
  • Telemetry Framework
  • Navigation Design
  • Components v1
  • Directory KTLO
  • Navigation Usability Test
  • Docs + Terms Widget
  • Directory Enhancements
  • Workflow Audit + Analysis
  • Use Case Audit + Analysis
  • Documentation Audit
  • Internal User Interviews
  • IA Inventory + Analysis
  • Error Message Analysis
  • User Mgt. Analysis
  • People Search User Research
  • OOB Standards Workshop
  • Customer Interviews
  • Content Council
  • Directory Analysis
  • Customer Journey Map Development
  • Persona Development
  • E2E Story Development
  • Policy Usability Test
  • IA Concept Design
  • User Mgt. IA Concept
  • Error Index Concept
  • North Star Design
  • IA Card Sort
  • Component Health Survey
  • Partners Survey
  • Navigation Design
  • Directory KTLO
  • Navigation Usability Test
  • Docs + Terms Widget
  • Directory Enhancements
  • Components v1
  • In Product Feedback
  • Telemetry Framework
  • Mar 13, 2020
  • Mar 20, 2020
  • Mar 27, 2020
  • Apr 03, 2020
  • Apr 10, 2020
  • Apr 17, 2020
  • Apr 24, 2020
  • May 01, 2020
  • May 08, 2020
  • May 15, 2020
  • May 22, 2020
  • May 29, 2020
  • Jun 05, 2020
  • Jun 12, 2020
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  • Jun 26, 2020
  • Jul 03, 2020
  • Jul 10, 2020
  • Jul 17, 2020
  • Jul 24, 2020
  • Jul 31, 2020
  • Aug 07, 2020
  • Aug 14, 2020
  • Aug 21, 2020
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  • Sep 04, 2020
  • Sep 11, 2020
  • Sep 18, 2020
  • Sep 25, 2020
  • Oct 02, 2020
  • Oct 09, 2020
  • Oct 16, 2020
  • Oct 23, 2020
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Drew has a true talent for simplifying complexity. He is able to quickly ramp up on new concepts, then extend and build upon them in ways that add vital connections to our customers’ needs.

— Josh Pelkey, Sr. Director Product Management

ARTIFACTS

Key deliverables – snapshots of the end results.

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Components IA / UI / UX
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Components Demo

Process Work – a deep dive into the E2E process.

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E2E Story: Self-Guided Adoption

What?

An end to end story is a holistic account of a market opportunity and product design problem. It includes perspective about the customer’s values, goals, and challenges as well as the business opportunity for the service provider.

Why?

Product design often involves many stakeholders and contributors, each with their own set of constraints and goals within those of the business. In the course of implementation, it is very easy for these parties to become misaligned or interpret data in different ways.

The E2E story is a tool that helps establish common understanding and alignment across functions by bringing the focus back to the solution's fundamental intentions.

I produced this story in collaboration with the Access PM director after we had gathered and synthesized our generative research data. I then presented it multiple times to various UX, PM, and ENG working groups to help recalibrate and align design thinking across the org.

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The Tri-Track model indicates that the 3 phases of the E2E design process are engaged in parallel. This allows for important UX processes like generative research, usability testing, and iterative design to happen without disrupting delivery timelines.