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Redesigning Norton Cloud Backup's setup and recovery to drive retention

Refreshing a backup experience neglected for five years to lift activation and retention, on a four-week deadline with no research budget.

Problem

Cloud Backup users retain 6% better than non-backup users, but the experience hadn't been touched in five years. A brand refresh gave us four weeks to find out how much of that retention upside we could unlock.

My role

Product designer on a team of three with a lead designer and a product manager. I owned the customer journey, audit, and end-to-end UI for the web account portal and supporting flows.

Solution

Fixed the highest-friction moments in setup and activation, separated overloaded color meaning across backup sets and file types, and brought the experience in line with the new brand and WCAG basics.

Outcome

Six months post-launch: backup activation up 13% and retention up 3.2% against our baseline KPIs. A meaningful boost for a four-week scope.

Norton Cloud Backup redesigned UI shown on a laptop and a phone, displaying a backup set named Sarah's Surface Pro with color-coded usage bar and file browser.

Key decisions

Activation, where users actually look

Users couldn't activate backup from the web account portal. They had to dig through the desktop client to find it, so I moved activation to where customers already expected it to live.

Before
Before: the My Norton dashboard buried Cloud Backup activation behind a Set Up Backup button that opened a generic Get Started video modal, with no path to actually turn backup on.
After
After: a clear decision flow from the My Norton dashboard into a dedicated Activate Cloud Backup screen, with confirmation and error states surfaced inline.

Giving color one job

One color was carrying two jobs. Backup sets and file types used the same palette and bled together, so I split them so each could read on its own without re-teaching users every screen.

Before
Before: backup card grid and file browser where backup sets and file types share the same color palette, so the two systems bleed together visually.
After
After: backup sets and file types use distinct color palettes, so each system reads on its own without re-teaching the user.

File explorer, rebuilt against heuristics

The file explorer broke efficiency and standard usability heuristics: inconsistent affordances, hard-to-scan hierarchy, no recovery from mistakes. I rebuilt it against Nielsen's usability heuristics and WCAG basics.

Before
Before: backup card grid and file browser with low-contrast affordances, dense search results, and a filter dropdown that obscured the table.
After
After: rebuilt file explorer with clearer hierarchy, scannable rows, file-type icon key, and recovery affordances aligned to Nielsen's heuristics and WCAG.

Managing files without fighting the UI

Folder actions only appeared on hover, breadcrumbs were buried, filters obscured the table, and users could only act on one file at a time. I surfaced persistent actions, added multi-select, moved breadcrumbs up, and made version counts visible at a glance — so finding, choosing, and acting on files became one fluid task.

Before
Before: file table with hover-only row actions, breadcrumbs at the bottom in small text, a filter dropdown that obscured the data, and filter options that appeared disabled but weren't.
After
After: persistent download and delete actions, multi-select checkboxes, breadcrumb moved to the top, and version counts shown inline so users can act on many files without re-orienting.

Getting signal with no research budget

With no time or budget for usability testing, I worked with the data we already owned. I mined Medallia survey comments for any mention of Cloud Backup, then ran a Nielsen heuristic and WCAG audit on the live product to understand where the pain actually was.

What the survey signal pointed to:

  • Average ease-of-use score of 7/10: usable; but needs improvement.
  • Three explicit requests for Mac compatibility.
  • Three users specifically called out trouble activating Cloud Backup.

This data, backed by the usability audit and my own struggles with using the product gave us all the confirmation we needed: activation and setup were the redesign priorities. Mac compatibility was out of scope this round due to OS and engineering constraints, and got logged for the next iteration.

Takeaways

  • A small, deliberate redesign on a long-neglected feature can move the metric. You don't always need a rebuild to earn the lift.
  • When you can't run research, look to analytics and other sources you may already have.