Cookie Manager
Designing, building, and integrating a new feature in Avast Online Security & Privacy.
Executive summary
Building on the successful Avast Online Security & Privacy redesign, our team developed a new feature for the company's flagship browser extension. This allowed us to expand the initial offering and pave a smoother path towards transitioning to the paid model as well as an integration with the Avast One suite.
Team
Product owner: Ron Ward
Product designer: Dmitry Shkaev
UX researchers: Natalie Schinkova, Veronika Konecna
UX writer: Alysa Yamada
Engineering: Jiri Pojezny, Anton Gilyov
Problem statement
Back in 2021, Avast purchased a popular browser extension called "I Don't Care About Cookies" created by Croatian developer Daniel Kladnik. It had around 750k active installs on the Google Chrome Store alone. The extension removes cookie consent prompts, allowing people to browse most websites without interruptions, which is especially relevant for the EU because of GDPR compliance.
The intention was to enhance and embed that functionality into one of the privacy-oriented products to strengthen the value provided to the user. In the beginning, our main candidate was Avast AntiTrack. However, being a paid product, it would not have received significant benefits from such integration. At that time, overshadowed by a number of major internal changes in Avast, the purchased extension was temporarily shelved.
Luckily, a perfect opportunity emerged by the end of 2021 with the revival of Avast Online Security & Privacy, which had quickly risen to be one of the top products, and could have used more features to support its core offering.
As the AOSP v2 designer, I was tasked with leading the creative work for this integration.
Goals for design
- Enable our users to get rid of cookie consent banners if they would rather not have their browsing experience constantly interrupted.
- Address the situations where people would face a complex cookie banner with multiple options, something the original extension had not fully solved.
- Seamlessly integrate the new feature into a recently created framework, tailoring both the user experience and visual appearance according to the established standards.
Design process
Business justification had already been completed prior to the design phase, so discovery in its classic form was not needed. We started by thinking about the potential location of the new functionality in the existing product. The challenging part was to find a delicate balance between user value, usability, in-app visibility, and product impact, while not stealing too much thunder from the existing primary features.
In the original extension, the interface was virtually non-existent, so we started with a clean slate, only adopting some parts of its backend.
Our initial ideas ranged from a single checkbox in settings to a dedicated tab in the UI with its own settings and data display. Through stakeholder discussions, it quickly became clear that the richer experience was the way to go. With that, we decided to include at least the following parameters: an on/off toggle, value indicators, customization, and whitelisting.
I produced wireframes covering all key ideas and requirements. We went through a few rounds of internal feedback, and then I moved on to produce hi-fi visuals to run the first external user test.
Prototype
After running the high-fidelity screens by the team and receiving sign-off from our project owner, I created a prototype in Figma, emulating the flow from installing the extension to discovering and using the Cookie Manager feature.
To prepare for the user interviews, we sourced questions from all stakeholders and key team members. The user interviews were conducted by my colleagues Natalie and Veronika. I joined one of the early calls to see if we were on the right track with gathering useful information. They also did a great job of putting together an extensive summary of the findings. Still, I watched all the recordings later by myself to note the specific observations I was looking for.
User experience research outcome
The results were strong and, in some respects, eye-opening. It was one of the most useful pieces of qualitative user research I had in a while, because of the number of important insights that people shared with us. As often happens, some of our previous assumptions did not hold up, and some performed really well.
For example, initially we adopted a tooltip system from Avast One, where people would hover over a question mark icon and read a short helper text. This interaction pattern has existed since the earliest visual operating systems, so it seemed obvious for the user. In reality, only two people out of ten found it, and only one of them cared to read the text. Even that person struggled to understand the intended message.
Overall, the feature was well received, and there were only moderate to minor usability issues. We presented the findings summary to the team for discussion and prioritization.
Next, I set out to structure, verify, and implement the feedback we had agreed to address.
As a result of this research, we reimagined how we presented complex cookie popups and the options provided to the user. Ideally, a second round of qualitative research would have followed, but given the tight timeline, we decided to proceed with the release, gather quantitative data, and revisit the feature in a second phase.
Handoff
We had a dedicated team of engineers assigned to the project, so our collaboration started as soon as the project kicked off. Working together, we were building the feature iteratively and on schedule, quickly resolving any issues as they emerged. I was pleased with how faithfully the frontend implementation matched the design.
How we measured success
The OKRs were well-defined: shipping on schedule, improving adoption after release, measuring sales impact from cross-promotional campaigns, increasing NPS results by a set amount, and a few others.
Results
We successfully shipped Cookie Manager and launched it alongside a marketing campaign. This marked an important milestone in the AOSP product roadmap. Over the next few months, adoption and engagement rates for Cookie Manager exceeded our expectations.
Personal takeaway
This was a perfect example of end-to-end regular design work in a corporate environment, excluding the discovery phase. It might seem routine on the surface, but these projects are always unique and present their own challenges. In this particular instance, I really liked how user research reshaped our design decisions and significantly affected the complexity of information presented to users.
Within a single project I had a chance to come up with a new information architecture, create raw concepts, craft prototypes, validate our ideas through feedback sessions and research, build high-fidelity UI, ship to developers, and work with them to oversee the implementation. It really had it all.
View more case studies