Azinno

This is a paper we presented at the CHI, the Computer-Human Interaction conference, titled Designing Software for Consumers to Easily Set Up a Secure Home Network. It is a summary on how a good user experience design impacts the bottom line. In this case study, the first pilot resulted a 46% reduction in calls to technical support. The shipping product saves Linksys several $ million annually.

Summary

Home networking continues to expand into a collection of computers and networked devices that are becoming more complex to setup and manage. Research indicated that new techniques were needed to help people set up a secure home network. The techniques should satisfy the expectations of advanced users, without requiring technical knowledge on the part of novice users. A central design theme influenced the software solution: If a networking expert was advising a user on how to set up, configure, and secure a home network, what would this person tell the user to do?

In this case study, insights about creating a new home networking program to solve the challenges are discussed. Results indicated animations, good default settings and a network map increased the user success rate for network setup.

Read Full Paper

Designing Software to Easily Setup A Secure Home Network, in Adobe Acrobat Reader, by Brenton Elmore, Subbarao Ivaturi, and Stuart Hamilton.