Ghostery Midnight VPN
Key Outcomes:
The Challenge
Research Process
Insights (Strategic and Tactical)
Business Outcomes
Partnerships: the final design allowed Ghostery to pitch the product to companies
Marketing and Business teams used research insights to prepare go-to-market strategies
Discovery, Definition, Ideation, and Testing Stages
Research Questions:
Does a mobile version of Ghostery Midnight appeal to VPN users who use their smartphones more often during the day?
How can we create a mobile experience that boosts efficient, fast VPN usage while on the go?
Ghostery Midnight was released as a desktop app that intercepts and blocks trackers in your desktop’s applications and encrypts your connection with VPN. Business goals and Ghostery Midnight’s success led to cross-functional work to explore strategically and tactically the opportunities and challenges of delivering the same desktop experience but in an app.
Internal stakeholder conversations: Product Manager and Product Marketing Manager for competitive analysis gaps
Attitudinal: Quant Survey
Ghostery users ~2000. Sample: ~350
Utilized Van Westerndorp to benchmark pricing and measure interest in Midnight Mobile.
Why: Opportunity to validate if it was viable, feasible, and met the needs of potential users to design a mobile version of it.
Exploration: Closed card sorting and information architecture
Why: to prioritize features and findability of critical elements: VPN and blocking ads/trackers
Moderated usability testing
Measured task-based efficiency and completion rate
Sample: 6 users
Criteria: VPN users (desktop or mobile), Ghostery users, know ad-blocking and anti-tracking technologies and have used a form of this tech for their phones.
Why 6? The budget allowed us to gather 2 participants from each segment identified within Ghostery Midnight (desktop version)
Expert trust: participants prefer to start using the product if an “expert” or a privacy-savvy person recommends it
Lack of confidence about privacy knowledge: participants who describe themselves as “not knowledgeable” about privacy tend to avoid using a privacy-centric app because of their complexity.
Growing Big-Tech anti-trust: participants were hearing a lot of news about big tech selling their data, prompting them to find privacy products to protect them.
Need for more salient information: participants who know more about privacy were confused about where to find more documentation about VPN
Findability problem: participants unfamiliar with adblocking/antitracking in their phones failed to find a way to whitelist pages.
No error tolerance: participants were confused about where to reach out to the Support team in case they encountered a problem or advice for troubleshooting
Unique value proposition: survey and usability testing validated the feasibility of the product’s business model. Marketing and Business teams utilized research insights to prepare go-to-market strategies.
App Design: research drove Ghostery Midnight Mobile’s intuitive and accessible design and informed a wide range of participants on how to navigate privacy, thus trusting Ghostery
Partnerships: the final design allowed Ghostery to pitch the product to negotiate viable VPN companies