N-able UX: Understanding Experience Principles

Experience principles are fundamental to building a successful user experience. Find out how we defined our experience principles at N-able.

You might be wondering what experience principles are, how they are created, and how they are used. In short, they are values that help create a shared experience vision, by applying them consistently across the board. They are based on research and incorporate insights about what users expect from the relationship with a specific organization or service.

But in order to define your experience principles, you need three things:

• A solid foundation of brand principles
• Know who you are as an organization
• Clear business goals to know in what direction the organization is heading

By knowing these, you can then look to define experience principles to help you deliver value while aligning to the brand, to the business goals, and to your users every step of the way.

What are brand principles and business goals?

• Brand principles are guidelines defining what your brand is all about, how it should be used, how you want it to be perceived, and how it should be communicated.
• Business goals: are targets, goals, or accomplishments that an organization wants to achieve in a period of time (short-term, or long-term).

N-able’s brand guiding principles

When we split from Solarwinds and became N-able, the brand team was able to re-imagine N-able; to take all the great things that Solarwinds MSP built and expand and grow upon it. We believe a brand is more than a collection of colors, fonts, images, and words — it’s a feeling; an emotion that is felt at every partner touch point. We evoke that feeling through our creative work and use it to build lasting relationships with partners, founded on trust and mutual admiration.

But why is this so important to N-able? Because we celebrate IT professionals. We call them partners because we know our success is linked to theirs. We empower them to be their best, and we embrace the higher expectations that come from being more to them than just another vendor. Success at N-able is measured in partners knowing they made the right choice when they chose us.

“At N-able we create innovative tools, offer comprehensive protection, and help our partners succeed. Our goal is to empower, inspire, and guide our partners via thought-provoking, optimistic, and approachable interactions. We seek to differentiate our brand at every partner touchpoint with more relevant and empowering solutions. Let’s zig when they zag.”

N-able’s business goals

N-able’s business foundation is to “turn IT possibilities into capabilities” by inspiring and guiding our partners and prospects, expanding the potential of Remote monitoring and management, Security, and Data Protection, while delivering partner success solutions at every touchpoint.

The business goal aligns very well with the guiding brand principles above, each part of an important pillar that makes up N-able and what we strive to mean for our partners.

What does that mean from a UX perspective?

There are a few key terms that are prevalent in both the brand principles and business goals and that are important to understand. Each of the six terms represents something special that we continuously strive to achieve, not only as a brand team and as a business but also in our user experience. They embody how we want our partners to feel when they see the N-able brand, but also in how they use our products. As a UX team, we looked to embellish the meaning behind each of those terms, to show how they apply to user experience:

• Empowering: Our partners feel in control of the decisions that matter and are free from being distracted by those that do not. They are connected to the right tools, decisions, and information that help them quickly and confidently make decisions that meet their needs and improve their efficiency.
• Inspiring: Our partners are motivated and engaged when using our products because they feel positive and excited about what they can do, how N-able empowers their business, and what this means for their future.
• Guiding: Our partners feel that we walk beside them to keep them from stumbling and avoid things that may be damaging, to provide them with what they need so they can make the right decisions for their business.
• Optimistic: Our partners feel positive about the future. What they see is bright and clear and they have confidence that it is accurate and reliable and that things will work as expected and help lead to successful outcomes.
• Thought-provoking: Our partners feel stimulated to think differently through innovative means, sparking fresh ideas with valuable insights, and driving them to explore opportunities that have not been imagined before.
• Approachable: It is effortless to engage with us because we are open and honest, and treat our partners as equals. We make the complex simple, and easy to understand which empowers our partners to actively seek answers that solve the right problems. Because of this, our partners are confident and feel supported.

Once we had a clear definition of our six key terms, we were able to put together six experience principles. These are applied to our products, and our processes, in both research and design across all of our workstreams. This is all done in the name of providing the most value and the best experience to our partners.

N-able’s user experience principles

So what are our user experience principles, what does each of them mean, and what are the best practices for each of them?

Keep the user informed: Users should have access to the right information at the right time, and always know what is happening, why, and how to proceed.

• Provide links to documentation
• Provide warnings and confirmations
• Provide notifications (proactive and reactive)
• Provide troubleshooting options
• Provide updates to the end-user on product releases
• Provide information on patterns and trends of behavior
• Provide # steps and progress

Allow the user to accomplish tasks efficiently: Applications should be built based on the “Jobs to be done” theory with logical and intuitive workflows.

• Create logical navigation and workflows
• Surface the value of other settings or features based on the usage of others
• Build mobile-friendly applications
• Provide links to support
• Provide intelligent help and recommendations
• Provide helpful user guides

Give the user flexibility: Users should be able to configure the application based on how they want to accomplish tasks, not have the application dictate how they should work.

• Provide flexible capabilities
• Allow for personalization
• Allow for customization
• Allow for self-service
• Design as an all-in-one solution
• Allow for integration and connections for third-party applications

Simplify the complex: Workflows, processes, and visualizations should be simple, easy to use, and intuitive so that users at any level can complete tasks efficiently.

• Keep workflows together
• Automate processes
• Use data visualization for critical data
• Use consistent terminology and tone of voice
• Provide simple instructions and steps
• Design responsively
• Provide cloud-first options

Use consistent patterns: Applications should be built using a standard design system, by following best practices, and creating consistent patterns and workflows for ease-of-use and familiarity.

• Use Apex patterns and layouts (to learn more about Apex please read N-able UX: Our Design System)
• Re-use known patterns and workflows where possible
• Align with brand/marketing for a consistent look and feel
• Build brand loyalty and awareness

Design for accessibility: Applications should be accessible to allow any user to comfortably use our applications, and feel confident that we have their best interests at heart.

• Provide accessible themes
• Use accessible colors and typography
• Allow for keyboard navigation/voice commands
• Reduce animations and visual effects
• Use ARIA and strong HTML

By defining experience principles, we believe that we are keeping our users’ best interests at heart and that they will feel supported with access to the right help at the right time. Reducing the burden on our users is fundamental to having a good user experience, not just from a UI perspective, but also holistically, from the moment they first hear about N-able to when they start using our products.

Experience principles should never be static, they should evolve over time as best practices, guiding brand principles and business goals evolve together.

Sandra Dennis
Manager, User Experience