Digital Report Teaser
Digital Halloween Card with Tenable
Client
Tenable
Project Duration
1 month
My Role
UX Design
Interaction Design
Programs Used
Ceros Studio
Adobe Illustrator
“Let’s make a game!” Tenable, the cybersecurity company, approached Ceros to create an interactive Holiday Card to engage their audience during Halloween. The types of content they had created within the Ceros Studio at this point were traditional report trends, landing pages, and quizzes. While they could have created a holiday card with a simple greeting and animations, the team was eager to explore something that was more unique and playful.
Our goal was to design and develop a cybersecurity interactive game that evokes the struggles and terrors of cyber attacks in a more fun and interesting way.
The Problem
My Role
As the UX designer, I was responsible for brainstorming, creating wireframes and prototypes, and producing the published digital experience. I collaborated closely with other Art Directors, Content Strategists, Developers and Production Designers to ensure the needs were met for Tenable and their users.
Brainstorming &
“How Might We”
Although we had created games in the Ceros platform in the past, it was very uncommon to have the creative liberties like with Tenable. We quickly brainstormed ways of bridging the themes of cyber security and Halloween. Throughout the brainstorm, we ran through “How Might We” exercises to help us get an understanding of what to prioritize and design.
How might we make the process of protecting yourself from cyber attacks less daunting?
How might we make the player feel the difficulty of warding off threats firsthand?
How might we make the game visuals align with a cybersecurity company? Haunted smart house? Futuristic/Neon-noir? Matrix? TRON?
How might we visualize cyberattacks?
How long will a player need to defend themselves?
How can we make the player feel accomplished about their efforts?
What does the ‘win’ condition look like?
The results from the brainstorm and HMW exercises pointed us toward a ‘tower defense’ game. We immerse the player into a TRON-inspired world where they defend their company building by clicking on the incoming threats to destroy them. Upon starting the game, the threats will be depicted as ghosts flying across the screen from either direction, and can range from easy to difficult as demonstrated by the speed of the threat, which can make it trickier to defend against. We reward the player with points for successfully defending against the threats and display their score at the end–which they can then share with their friends or learn more about Tenable’s services. The player should feel the struggle of defending against cyber threats first-hand, and perhaps consider reaching out to the company for their help and services.
Solution
TRON-inspired atmosphere
Immersion in a tech-y, neon world, where everything is linked to technology.
Adorable Ghosts = Cyberattacks
Give the cyber threats a personality and recognizable characteristics. We don’t want to necessarily scare our audience, so we try something that is more playful while still easily relating to the Halloween theme.
Speed and Difficulty
Some cyber threats are more difficult to catch and defend against. We use speed ranging from slow to fast, with higher points rewarded to match the difficulty of the trickier obstacles.
Building Decay
Over the duration of the game, the building you defend from threats physically changes to reflect how the cyberattacks are hurting you and your company. The player may experience feeling helpless against defending against the threats alone no matter how well they think they are doing. (Hint: With Tenable, it would be easier.)
Final Design
Results &
Learnings
Tenable was extremely happy with the final game. They saw a +20% outbound click through rate and tens of thousands of interaction clicks tracked from the holiday card campaign. The holiday card game was a big hit with the entire Tenable team and their audience, and resulted in more game iterations the following years; including whack-a-mole and hidden object types of games.
The gamified experience is a very rare and unique use case within the Ceros Studio. I learned a lot about what is involved when developing a game including how to create a challenge, theming, logic, and empathy in gaming. We used these findings in future game projects with other clients and push the boundaries even further of what was possible within the Ceros Studio and create games even faster.