Company:
WatchGuard Technologies
Year:
2023-2025
Duration:
2 years
Overview
FireCloud is WatchGuard’s cloud-managed Secure Access Service Edge platform, created to protect remote users as they access the internet and private company resources.
As the lead product designer, I have owned the end-to-end experience across onboarding, configuration, monitoring, administration, desktop and mobile connection tools, and more than 75 product features. I partnered with three product managers and approximately 20 engineers across six teams to take the product from an initial concept through launch and continued expansion.
My work included product strategy, user research, interaction design, prototyping, usability testing, design-system alignment, and ongoing collaboration with engineering throughout implementation.
Problem
WatchGuard needed to enter the rapidly growing SASE market with a competitive product on an aggressive timeline. Unlike an incremental feature added to an established product, FireCloud had to be designed largely from the ground up while still feeling consistent with the broader WatchGuard Cloud platform.
Early research showed that many competing SASE products were difficult to configure and manage. Administrators frequently had to navigate complex terminology, fragmented setup processes, and interfaces built primarily for networking experts. This created an opportunity for WatchGuard to differentiate FireCloud through ease of deployment and day-to-day management.
The product also had to support two distinct forms of secure access. Internet Access would protect remote users while browsing the internet, while Private Access would securely connect those users to internal company resources. The team chose to launch Internet Access first and build Private Access as the next major phase of the platform.
The central design challenge was therefore to make a technically complex enterprise-security product approachable without removing the controls and flexibility experienced administrators required.
Solution
We began by working directly with customers who had experience using competing SASE products. Through interviews, competitive analysis, surveys, field studies, and collaborative workshops, we identified the workflows customers considered essential and the areas where existing products created unnecessary complexity.
These findings established a clear product principle: FireCloud should be one of the easiest SASE solutions to deploy and manage. I translated that direction into an experience that guided administrators through setup, introduced advanced controls progressively, and reused familiar WatchGuard Cloud patterns where consistency benefited existing customers.
Initial concepts were reviewed with customers, sales teams, product managers, and engineers. As research continued, we revised the designs, deprioritized requirements that did not provide enough immediate customer value, and focused the initial release around the workflows customers needed most.
Each major feature went through iterative prototyping and moderated usability testing. Across the broader product, we conducted more than 20 customer interviews, approximately 50 usability tests, and several extended research sessions. Testing occurred throughout the product’s development and generally included multiple rounds for major releases.
After launching Internet Access, we repeated the research and validation process for Private Access. Because the team had already established the product architecture, design patterns, and collaborative process, the second phase moved from research through implementation considerably faster.
FireCloud has continued to expand beyond its original release. The patterns established through the product have influenced other areas of WatchGuard Cloud, including navigation, dashboards, log search, and reporting experiences. Product analytics have also indicated substantially lower rage-click and reversal rates than the wider platform, supporting the original goal of creating a more understandable and manageable security experience.
