LiveTraffic Feature for Ghostery Midnight
Key Outcomes:
The Challenge
Research Process
Tactical Insights
Business Outcomes
Research demonstrated business viability of the new feature
Cross-collaboration between engineers led to better operational research goals
Ideation, and Testing Stages
Research Questions:
Is LiveTraffic a product that meets the needs of Power Users?
What are the experiences within LiveTraffic that can be capitalized and expand the user base?
Ghostery started building a feature within the Ghostery Midnight app with a focus on users whose digital environments contain highly technical apps. Ghostery discovered, via survey, to build a feature about monitoring network traffic called LiveTraffic.
Given UX Research component was added in-between production builds, the team utilized mixed methods to ensure the research questions were properly answered
Competitive and Stakeholder Review:
Research about best web debugging proxies user interfaces
Interview developers and highly trained network engineers, who are the main stakeholders and already dedicated time building a production version of LiveTraffic
2. Moderated Usability Testing:
60-minute sessions: In-depth research on LiveTraffic feature hasn’t been done, and this period allows for foundational research, concept testing, and even gauging pricing point
Sample:
Power Users (privacy-centric participants who possess a broad amount of information about privacy)
Have used/are using web debugging proxies like CharlesProxy/Fiddler
Know about Ghostery brand (have used either Ghostery Midnight or Ghostery Browser Extension)
Professional Backgrounds: Cybersecurity, Software Engineering, Network Engineering
Part one: 30 minute unstructured, moderated interview to gauge into their digital privacy environments, what they know about network traffic, what tools do they use, what they like/don’t like about them, and what do they pay currently.
Part two: 30 minute task analysis user testing to use a production build of LiveTraffic feature, version 1.0
Triggering network requests
Searching within LiveTraffic
How click, copy, and share a URL (network traffic URL)
Submitting a newfound tracker to Ghostery Support
Metrics:
Completion rate
Error Rate
Increase ad and tracker awareness: when participants worked with the search task, they first wanted to search ‘ads’, ‘trackers’, and cookies.
Enhance effective imagery and control: participants were expecting more visual cues when completing the tasks. This is an opportunity to have more visual aid for users to quickly identify “ads” and “trackers”
More information = more transparency: some participants expected a guide or dictionary so they can use the platform and learn how LiveTraffic helps them
An opportunity to compete with higher technical apps: LiveTraffic research proved to be beneficial to those who are looking for a quick scan on their network traffic, prompting faster debugging and easier learning curve.