Objective:
Design an intuitive "Lost Mode" feature for a Mobile Device Management (MDM) platform to help administrators locate, secure, and recover lost or stolen devices while minimizing risks to sensitive data.
Problem Statement:
Lost or stolen mobile devices pose significant security and operational risks to organizations, especially in industries like healthcare, retail, and logistics where sensitive data is at stake. Administrators need a way to:
Locate devices in real time.
Lock them remotely to prevent unauthorized access.
Display a customizable message for recovery.
Track location history post-loss.
Enable Lost Mode even when devices are offline, activating automatically upon reconnection.
Goals:
Create a seamless Lost Mode experience integrated into an MDM platform's ecosystem.
Cater to diverse personas: IT Admins, Fleet Managers, DevOps Engineers, Security Analysts, and SMB Owners.
Balance power for technical users with simplicity for non-technical ones.
Reduce time-to-action for lost device scenarios from minutes to seconds.
My approach:
This was a domain that I was not completely familiar with. So the first step I had to take was to understand the domain and feed as much data as possible to myself on order to be able to make conscious decisions while designing for the problem at hand.
The Idea was to take an outbound approach to understanding the MDM ecosystem. And where a company like Esper.io stands in the ecosystem.
Analyzing MDM platforms:
I started by understanding:
What Mobile Device Management is?
Who are the leaders in the market?
Why there is a need for MDM platforms?
Where Esper's specialization is, in the domain?
Who are the key competitors for Esper?
What features do they have?
I created a mind map of my answers to these questions, which would help me later on while designing for the specific problem at hand.
Key Insights:
There are MDMs and UEMs in the same domain
MDMs can be considered as a subset of UEMs (Unified Endpoint Monitoring platforms)
Esper falls under the specialized category of MDMs primarily focusing on Android and iOS based mobile devices (smartphone and tablets)
Their key competitors in the market are Hexnode UEM, Scalefusion, Jumpcloud etc - though the utility of each and the scope of devices and scale varies slightly
Who are the users ?
After getting a decent understanding of the domain, I moved on to trying to understand who would be the users for these platforms and why they need them.
I categorized the key user buckets as:
Buyers: Who need the platform for their organization
Users: Primary users of the platform who configures, manages and uses it to manage mobile devices in their network
End-User: Who use the devices managed by the platforms at the edge points of the business
That brought me to question how to categorize the type of businesses that need this tool in their org primarily (Buyers)
I found that they can be used in multiple domains across several industries where mobile devices are needed like (Healthcare, Retail, etc) and categorized them into 3 broad buckets.
Businesses with specific usecases:
- Needs a tight control on the edge devices with minimal interfaces, and capability to seamlessly manage and update themOrgs with Small to large device fleets:
- Needs centralized monitoring, bulk provisioning, and remote management
- Simple setup, remote control, and security without a steep learning curveTech companies with custom needs:
- Needs custom apps deployed as a service with the device, with easy lifecycle or app release management
- Needs developer integrations and APIsMost companies that need MDMs can be categorized into these 3 buckets or a mix of 2 or all 3 buckets, based on the need and scale.
Primary users:
I needed to understand the types of users for the type of tool to make sure that my way of designing aligns with the needs of the People who interact with the software to configure, manage, and monitor devices
Users by actions they perform on MDM tools :
IT Administrators
Enrolls devices
Set device security policies
Monitor compliance and troubleshoot issues remotely
Pushes app updates to edge
Device fleet managers
Manages device logistics (Closer to inventory management)
Tracks devices
Coordinates device deployment
Analyse ops and makes reports
Devs/ DevOps Engineers
Develops custom apps tailored to usecases
Testing and staging
Remote debugging
Compliance officers
Defines and enforces security policies
Audits compliance reports frequently
Support technicians
Field users of the tool
Physically deploying devices at endpoints
Resolve issues / troubleshoot issues remotely
After carefully assessing what these users do, I created 2 general archetypes for them, which would help me in designing for complexity and based on their individual need, while being generic enough to cater to the broader spectrum of users. The reason why I did this is that each of these roles require the tool to be catered primarily for their use case but the needs have to be covered across the board for all users.
The archetypes would also be the guiding persona classifications to consider how the features are distributed in general and then looking at the specific task at hand - which is to Lock, track and manage lost or misplaced devices.
The 2 key archetypes that Ive come up with are:
Technically sound + Control Oriented
Low skill users in this archetype : eg., A Small-Medium business owner (eg., owner of a restauraunt) has tablets/smartphones for taking orders - smaller scale
High skill users in this archetype: eg., IT Admin or Dev Ops Engineer who uses the tool to tweak Android kernel settings for IoT devices and update on a plurality of devices - for a large scale industry domain
Proactive + Firefighters
People who constantly monitor the tool across devices on a daily basis
Proactively prevents and troubleshoots issues and supports remotely
Creating the information architecture:
Before jumping directly into the task at hand, I needed to create architecture that atleast mentions the extended features of an MDM tool for this use case, and then double-clicking on the Lost Mode feature in detail, in order to define my user journeys.
For the purpose of this case study Ive considered the "Technically sound + Control Oriented" User archetype.
Specifically IT Admins and Device Fleet managers who are tasked with the process of tracking and recovering a lost device.
Before creating the information architecture, I went through setup videos of Esper and Hexnode specifically and a skimmed understanding of other tools in the same domain, and created a base app architecture.
And then moved on to expanding the parts that pertain to the usecase at hand.
Information architecture:
User Flows for Lost or Stolen Devices:
In order to keep things interesting, I thought of making up scenarios that would lead to the need for such a feature and create user flows based on them.
Flow 1: Immediate Lost Mode Activation - by IT Admin
User flow:
Wire Frames (High Fidelity):
Actions by user on the MDM platform to enable Lost mode:
Lost Mode message on Edge device:
When Lost mode is enabled, all online devices show the lost-mode screen.
This will send the location data along with a device log to the admin
If a user who found the device selects notify us, they could enter their contact details to make the device recovery easier
If the device was offline when the admin turned on lost-mode, the edge device gets set to lost mode as soon as it is turned on.
Updating Screen-Lock Message:
Flow 2: Tracking a Stolen Device - by Fleet manager or IT Admin
User flow:
Wireframes (High-Fidelity) : Work in Progress
Track device + Location history
Flow 3: Resolving a Recovered Device - by Fleet manager or IT Admin
User flow:
Wireframes (High-Fidelity) :
Flow 4: Tracking a multiple stolen devices - by Fleet manager or IT Admin
User flow:
Wireframes (High-Fidelity) :
