Revolutionising cyber-security with design — How Trusona empowered their workflow and Sales Team with Marvel prototypes

Industry: Cyber-security
Locations: Scottsdale, San Fran, Tokyo, London
Key Features: Prototyping, Collaboration

Trusona envision a new world where the weakest link in cybersecurity, the password, is replaced by a user-centered experience that is both usable and secure. Chief Design Officer, Kevin Goldman, says, “We think that security is one of the most interesting places for a designer to be right now, it’s really on the cusp. We’re quickly reaching a point where we need the human side of the screen to be as elegant as those algorithms, bits and bytes are formed of.”

Launched 3.5 years ago, Trusona’s authentication service is now used by some of the largest enterprises around the world, including a partnership with tech giant, Microsoft. Their service has true demand across the globe and their team of 33 are constantly finding new innovative ways to optimise their product for the omni-channels they service, including ATMs. That’s where Marvel comes in.

Their Founder, Ori Eisen, knew it was important for their business to embed design thinking, not just into the product, but into the company as well. “It was a really important decision on Ori’s part to hire an executive in design, who has a seat at the table" says Kevin. In doing this, they allowed design to be something that wasn’t seen as a side group, or subsidiary of the product, marketing, or any other group. “That was probably the single most important way in which we help make design part of everything that happens here. And Marvel really facilitates this way of thinking.”

At Trusona, the design team is everywhere; pairing with engineering, imagining and writing with marketing and strategizing with product. Even co-creating assets and demos with sales, and running their own ethnographic research.

“Marvel is a democratic design tool,” says Mariel, Lead Product Designer at Trusona.

Mariel explains that keeping a multidisciplinary team that spans continents updated and on-target is no easy feat but Marvel helps their global team collaborate. They share everything from large prototypes solving cases in their Software Development Kits (SDKs), to one-page marketing materials for approval.

“Aside from the design culture we’re building, we're very heavy on a balanced and family culture,” Mariel continues. “Not only for people working remotely, but Kevin and I travel, we both have kids, family engagements and priorities. Because we have Marvel, it’s possible for me to be in Mexico, him be here at the office, work on a paper, and I know that I can take a picture of my work, send it to him, and he can comment directly into the prototype.”

Trusona’s design workflow means combining Marvel, Abstract and Sketch, which they combine with a functioning demo for the whole company, which they call The Lab. The first time they did this, they had the whole company interested and adopting that workflow with Marvel within a week. “We realised that we could combine a prototype in the working code, within a week, and never went back,” says Kevin.

The team instantly switched to that format for almost all the demos they were creating, and now design have trained sales engineers to create those prototypes on their own.

Getting the other teams up to speed was no hassle, Kevin says, “It really wasn’t a lot to onboard them with Marvel, it was more of an un-experience to onboard them! Just because the tool is very self-explanatory.”

Their sales team use Marvel everyday, including those who manage their Microsoft partnership. Throughout the sales process, they showcase prototypes which provide a general awareness of what Trusona does, and also build more specific, visually dynamic prototypes that help really cement what the experience is using Trusona.

“This means that our prospects get to see our passwordless multi-factor authentication logins as if it were in their sites,” Kevin tells us. “Bridging a gap that may be too broad for some to cross without visual, “clickable” aids.”

Kevin explains that one of Trusona’s biggest deciding factor to go with Marvel, is that the tool let’s their work be the star of the show.

“If you take a screenshot of some of the other tools on the market and calculate the percentage of the UI that's dedicated to the work, and to the tool itself - something like 20% of the screen real estate is dedicated to the tool. I can't get behind that. So, we made the decision to go with Marvel, and have not once regretted it since we did that years ago.”