Kris Niles, Senior User Experience Designer at Citrix Online
Kris Niles has been on the cutting edge of GoToAssist Express’ development from day one. Kris is a senior user experience designer at Citrix Online and was the lead designer for the user interface of our remote support super tool. So who better to interview as we celebrate the very first anniversary of GoToAssist Express?
Kris created the look and feel of the GoToAssist Express application, from its icons and color palette to its tabs and buttons. He determined the “interaction flows” — the paths that users take as they navigate around GoToAssist Express. Furthermore, Kris remains on top of ongoing design enhancements for GoToAssist Express and is up to his eyeballs researching the customers’ use and experience.
Hi Kris, I know you were involved with GoToAssist Express from the very start. Can you tell me what pushed Citrix Online to build this product?
GoToAssist Express was a product designed for the individual tech support provider. Usually these guys and gals belonged to small companies with two or three tech support reps or maybe they were just individual proprietors who had a tech support business. They might have customers around town or around the state or maybe even around the world, and we found that these people were spending a lot of time traveling to their customers’ houses. They might drive an hour to do a five-minute fix. So we saw a need there for an easier way to do things. GoToAssist Express was really built out of that — a need to really quickly and easily connect to customers and help them with their tech issues.
How did that affect the look and feel of GoToAssist Express?
When we started the design process, we decided to make a user interface that was very streamlined and sleek. Our users are very task oriented, and we wanted a design that receded into the background and lets you simply focus on the task at hand (fixing your customer’s issue!). After several iterations, we decided on our black design – a black frame to the viewing window and a black ribbon toolbar with light blue icons. The result was a design that we feel is subtle, sleek and has a bit of a “techie” feel to it, to convey its purpose and underlying power.
So it’s sleek, understated and functional, kind of like a tool?
Kind of techie, kind of cool and visually appealing.
The interface – "kind of techie, kind of cool"
What were your guiding ideas in designing GoToAssist Express for small businesses and individual tech support providers?
There were a couple of big principles. The first one was it had to be incredibly easy and very fast to get into a session with your customer.
If you were on the phone talking to the customer and they said, “I am really having a problem with my computer. Could you come out and take a look at it?” you could say, “Know what, hang on one second,” and start a support session right there with them on the phone and resolve the issue. Start the app, get the support key, relay it to the customer and then jump into the session in less than 30 seconds. That was one of the biggest things. We said no matter what happens, we want it to be lightening fast to get into a session and get going.
Another big idea was that the app be really screen-sharing focused so the support expert could instantly see the customer’s machine. That was the second most important element. So we designed a minimal user interface so that seeing the customer’s screen is the primary, most important thing.
Another element that we continuously strove for was making it so easy to use that you don’t need to read a manual. … You can just start the app and use it! We really wanted it to be discoverable and intuitive. And we got some really good feedback from customers saying, “I didn’t even bother to read the manual. I just opened and it said here’s the support key — give that to the customer.” And they just click the button and go. That’s 100 percent something we were striving for — ease of use, discoverability, learnability.
I understand that GoToAssist Express was developed with a lot of testing, user feedback and innovation along the way. You’re very focused on the customer experience. How’d the development of our remote-support tool involve customers and their feedback?
Well, an especially innovative thing about GoToAssist Express was the way we rolled out the product as a free beta. So we built it with the basic number of features that people would need and put it out there, saying, “Sign up for free, use it, tell us what you think.” And every time someone would run a session, it would conclude with a feedback form. … We got thousands of pieces of feedback every day. For a year, we kept developing the product and kept building these new features, while customers were using it. They got the benefit of using it for free, and we got the benefit of their great feedback.
And we are still constantly getting feedback from our users and striving to make our product better. We’ve a feedback email link (feedback@gotoassistexpress.com), a user forum on our Web site and a feedback forum where users can suggest and vote for new GoToAssist features.
So the GoToAssist Express interface didn’t just develop out of a master plan in your head but instead depended on our users?
It’s become very much a collaborative effort. We reach out to our customers a lot and ask them “how would you design this feature?” It’s great to put users in the role of designer. We are working together to ultimately make a product that really works well for them. As a designer, I hope that I have a certain expertise and background that I can use to facilitate design, but I love how it’s become more of a collaborative thing.
Well this interview is in part to celebrate the product’s one year anniversary and we might say a celebration of its success too.
Absolutely. I think this is a really successful product. With our users, we have a really high satisfaction rate, and by and large they are very happy with the product because it does exactly what they need it to do. Over the last year we have seen a tremendous amount of feedback from those customers who are really loving it and also enhancements they’d like to see — that’s how we are going to take it to the next level this next year.
