Twitter case study

Increasing security for professional teams and shared accounts

Overview

Working with professional Twitter users from BBC News, Al Jazerra, CBS, Reach PLC and others, Twitter asked Thunk to improve their product’s user experience for journalists and high volume users. Many professional users and teams have developed workarounds or actively share passwords to allow multiple team members access to one account. This has an obvious security impact.

The existing pro/multiple account management system had been in place for many years and was not well used or understood. We set about understanding current user needs and behaviour through extensive research. Our design phase reimagined how teams and professional users could manage multiple accounts and share team member access in a more intuitive way, inline with their needs.

What we did

User surveys – 1015 Professional users surveyed
User research – 12 Professional users and teams interviewed and observed
Task analysis
Analytics deep dive
Design sprint
Cross functional collaboration
Strategy & planning
Design iteration
Usability testing

Results

-18%

Reduction in password sharing for teams and shared accounts
+22%

Increase in usage of access tools
80%

Bad or old access data cleaned up or removed

“Great product design, professional, so fun to work with and actual results. Thunk built on the previous research work they did for us with solid designs that met our professional users’ needs. Another successful engagement with Thunk.”

– Felicia Williams, Design Director

Project Highlights

1. Strategy & Planning

Discovering and planning the multiple projects required to execute successfully

Insights from deep user research, analytics and heuristic evaluation of existing tools revealed a multitude of both user and business problems that needed to be solved for successful execution. Collaborating with internal data science teams, we put in place several projects that started with the clean up of existing data from both the user side and the business side.

As well as highlighting user needs, which informed the design of these features, our research also exposed a marketing need around the teams and shared accounts features for professional users. We worked with internal marketing teams to formulate communication strategies that dovetailed with product design improvements.

2. Design iteration and user testing

Working with cross functional teams across the business to deliver design solutions

With insights from user research and goals from internal teams and stakeholders, we entered our iterative design phase to bring a more understandable and accessible way to manage and use multiple Twitter accounts across professional teams.

Working closely with internal engineering and product teams, we refined designs and went through several rounds of user testing before high confidence directions emerged. Through both the research and design phases we brought internal teams with us on the journey, which meant collaboration and execution was fast and aligned across teams.