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Rebrand with Design System

Rebrand the McAfee Enterprise support sites (support portal, community forums, and agent portal) to align with brand guidelines for newly formed company.

Overview

Context:
McAfee Enterprise was acquired by a private equity firm and merged with FireEye, forming a new cybersecurity company, Trellix. This transition necessitated a comprehensive rebrand of the McAfee Enterprise support ecosystem, including the support portal, community forums, and agent portal, to align with Trellix’s emerging brand identity.

Objective:
Rebrand the McAfee Enterprise support sites to reflect Trellix’s new brand identity while maintaining the existing user experience and functionality.

Timeline:
6 months

My Role:
End-to-end ownership of the rebrand for all three sites, serving as:

  • Product/Project Manager
  • CX/UX/UI Designer
  • Content Editor
  • Web Developer – HTML/CSS
  • QA
Tools:
  • Adobe Creative Suite (XD, Dreamweaver, Photoshop, Illustrator, Acrobat)
  • Khoros
  • Zeplin
  • JIRA
  • Aisera
  • MS Office

Challenges and Considerations

  • Limited Scope: The integration of McAfee Enterprise and FireEye support sites was out of scope, leaving uncertainty regarding long-term platform consolidation.
  • Resource Constraints: As the sole designer familiar with the support sites and community, I had to efficiently manage design, development, and content updates.
  • Limited Brand Guidelines: Initially, the brand guidelines only covered logo, fonts, colors, and basic visual assets, requiring iterative refinements.
  • Parallel Corporate Site Development: The marketing team was simultaneously building the corporate Trellix website, leading to shifting guidelines and evolving requirements.
  • Strict Deadline: A hard six-month timeline necessitated strategic prioritization and agile execution.

Approach and Execution

Research and Planning:

  • Comprehensive Site Inventory: Audited all three sites to catalog pages, assets, documents, tools, and applications requiring rebranding.
  • Project Roadmap Development: Created a structured project plan, detailing tasks, milestones, dependencies, and resource allocation.
  • Prioritization Strategy:
    • Tasks were ranked by visibility (internal vs. external), interdependencies, and effort required.
    • A roadmap was developed, highlighting key deliverables within two months to create an early rebrand impact per executive requests.
  • Design Reference Library: Compiled layouts, UI elements, colors, and styles from the emerging Trellix corporate site for alignment.

Design and Definition:

  • Atomic Design System: Developed a modular design system to ensure consistency and scalability across all platforms.
  • Low-Fidelity Wireframes: Created wireframes in Adobe XD for all unique site layouts and interactions to minimize UI variations and accelerate development.
  • High-Fidelity Mockups: Built over 100 detailed mockups based on developer feedback, using Zeplin to provide precise UI specifications.
  • Agile Story Creation in JIRA:
    • Support Portal: Structured into two main stories and an epic:
        • Story 1: Shared UI elements, styles, header, footer, and templates—expedited for early developer handoff.
        • Story 2: Unique pages (404/500 error pages, etc.).
        • Epic: Included stories for each support section, with incremental design and development handoffs.
  • Community Forum: JIRA stories focused on SSO-managed login, password recovery, and registration, with the remaining redesign handled in Khoros.
  • Agent Portal: Due to limited visibility and resources, prioritized externally accessible pages first, deferring internal page updates.

Development, Testing and Implementation:

  • Cross-Team Collaboration: Held twice-weekly stand-up meetings with developers to track progress, clarify requirements, and address blockers.
  • Iterative Testing and Validation:
    • Conducted UX/UI testing in staging environments before deployment.
    • Ensured design fidelity and brand consistency across all elements.
  • CMS and Content Overhaul:
    • Directly updated portal CMS and Khoros to align with Trellix branding.
    • Rebranded support guides and handbooks available for user downloads.

Post-Implementation and Continuous Improvement:

  • Stakeholder Support: Served as the primary point of contact for any rebranding-related issues, including those arising from the domain transition to trellix.com.
  • Issue Triage and Resolution: Prioritized post-launch defects and content refinements, coordinating with developers for rapid fixes.
  • User Feedback Integration: Collected insights from internal teams and users to refine the experience in subsequent updates.

Key Outcomes and Impact

  • Seamless Brand Transition: Successfully rebranded three major support platforms within the defined timeline while ensuring brand alignment and usability.
  • Scalable Design System: Established a reusable design framework, minimizing future design and development overhead.
  • Efficient Development Workflow: Proactively structured JIRA stories and developer handoffs to maximize efficiency and reduce redundant work.
  • Maintained User Experience: Prioritized high-visibility updates to create a cohesive user experience post-rebrand.

Lessons Learned

  • Strategic Prioritization is Key: Balancing executive expectations with development constraints required a tactical approach to phasing deliverables.
  • Clear Communication Accelerates Execution: Regular stand-ups and detailed JIRA stories ensured developers could work autonomously with minimal bottlenecks.
  • Adaptability Drives Success: Navigating evolving brand guidelines and resource limitations reinforced the importance of agility in large-scale UX projects.

Conclusion

This project exemplifies my ability to lead a complex UX initiative from strategy to execution. By leveraging a user-centered approach, strategic product/project management, and cross-functional collaboration, I successfully delivered a high-impact rebrand within a constrained timeline.