MCAFEE VPN

Revamping McAfee's VPN to make invisible protection feel clear and contextual.

McAfee's VPN is one of many security tools, often bundled in protection plans. Over time, the tool had fallen behind as updates rolled out to newer products, and was not being maintained by a dedicated team.

McAfee's VPN is one of many security tools, often bundled in protection plans. Over time, the tool had fallen behind as updates rolled out to newer products, and was not being maintained by a dedicated team.

To address long-standing pain points and it's outdated MVP, I assisted with early research, feature planning, and end-to-end designs.

To address long-standing pain points and it's outdated MVP, I assisted with early research, feature planning, and end-to-end designs.

With Susanna Huang, Nina Wang, Jeffrey Jose & Jen Barrell.

CONTRIBUTIONS

Design Documentation Component Creation

Prototyping

Workshop Facilitator

TIMELINE

Nov — Jan 2024

TOOLS

Figma + Figjam

Clay;

Overview

Limitations

Problem

Iterations

Iterations

Outcome

Learnings

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PROBLEM

First time customers struggled to
understand what their VPN does

"It's on, but nothing happened, is it doing something?"

Unlike security software that shows what dangers they stopped, VPNs work by making you invisible to threats, making it difficult to show their value. Without a clear purpose, we saw a decline in users renewing their VPN subscription

First time customers struggled to understand what their VPN does

"It's on, but nothing happened, is it doing something?"

Unlike security software that shows what dangers they stopped, VPNs work by making you invisible to threats, making it difficult to show their value. Without a clear purpose, we saw a decline in users renewing their VPN subscription

We need to better communicate how our VPN

is protecting the users privacy → contextual to

when they use it.

PROBLEM

First time customers struggled to
understand what their VPN does

"It's on, but nothing happened, is it doing something?"

Unlike security software that shows what dangers they stopped, VPNs work by making you invisible to threats, making it difficult to show their value. Without a clear purpose, we saw a decline in users renewing their VPN subscription

Overview

Limitations

Problem

Explorations

Iterations

Outcome

Learnings

PROBLEM

New users struggled to understand what a VPN does, and when to use it.

"It's on, but nothing happened, is it doing something?"

"It's on, but nothing happened, is it doing something?"

Unlike security software that shows what dangers they stopped, VPNs work by making you invisible to threats, making it difficult to show their value.

Without a clear purpose, we saw a decline in users renewing their VPN subscription

Image |

Current VPN design

Image |

Current VPN design

Image |

Current VPN design

Overview

Limitations

Problem

Iterations

Iterations

Outcome

Learnings

PROBLEM

New users struggled to understand what a VPN does, and when to use it.

"It's on, but nothing happened, is it doing something?"

Unlike security software that shows what dangers they stopped, VPNs work by making you invisible to threats, making it difficult to show their value. Without a clear purpose, we saw a decline in users renewing their VPN subscription

OPPORTUNITTY

We need to better communicate how our VPN is protecting the users privacy → contextual to when they use it.

LONG TERM GOAL

We hypothesize that with proper context, users will instinctively

activate their VPN when a network feels unsafe

→

"This airport WI-FI seems sketchy,

I should turn on my VPN just in case"

REFLECTION

Despite the internal hype, priorities changed and the revamp was shelved. But my learnings shipped.

Everyone hates reading, but love conversational writing.
Balancing what we as a business want users to know V.S what a user actually wants to know is a difficult line. This project helped me learn how to use metaphors on boring language into legible content.
Sketching is for starting discussions, not beauty contests.
I typically jump into higher fidelity, but if I need to align a team on layout and abstract concepts, I’m now confident in running a workshop to rapid-fire ideas and align stakeholders from other teams.

Check out my other work!

Check out my other work!

Slackronyms →

Slackronyms

© 2025 Clayton Harding

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