F-Secure Horizon

Objective

Design a clear and scalable onboarding journey for partners joining the Horizon platform, enabling them to understand, configure, and launch cybersecurity services efficiently.

Business Challenge

As F-Secure developed the Horizon platform, the partner onboarding experience had not yet been clearly defined.

Key challenges included:

• Lack of a structured onboarding flow
• Unclear communication across different onboarding stages
• Multiple internal touch points without unified experience
• No previous research data for partners

Design Goal

The goal was to define and cohesive onboarding journey that reflects F-Secure’s brand values of trust, clarity, and simplicity. At the same time, the experience needed to support multiple partner models, including operators, resellers, and B2B2C service providers.

Research & Discovery

The project began with stakeholder discussions and discovery sessions focused on understanding how partners would interact with the Horizon platform. These conversations helped identify the operational steps partners needed to complete before launching cybersecurity services.

Through this process, we identified areas where partners might experience confusion, particularly around setup requirements, terminology, and the sequence of actions required to activate services.

Benchmarking

To inform the design direction, I conducted benchmarking across cybersecurity platforms and SaaS products that rely heavily on partner ecosystems. This helped identify patterns in onboarding structure, such as guided setup flows, clear progress indicators, and contextual explanations during complex configuration steps.

These insights informed how the Horizon onboarding experience could guide partners without overwhelming them.

Experience Design

Based on the research insights, I designed a structured onboarding journey that guides partners through the essential steps required to start using Horizon. The focus was on creating a logical progression of actions while minimizing cognitive load.

Rather than presenting all information at once, the flow introduces tasks gradually and provides contextual explanations at the moment they are needed. This approach helps partners move through the setup process with greater confidence and clarity.

Iteration & Stakeholder Alignment

Early concepts were presented through interactive prototypes during regular stakeholder reviews. These sessions allowed us to quickly validate the clarity of the flows while ensuring alignment with product requirements and technical constraints. Feedback from these discussions informed multiple iterations of the onboarding structure and interface.

Simplified Onboarding Flow

Streamlined the partner onboarding process by consolidating steps and removing friction, enabling users to complete setup faster and more intuitively.

Contextual Guidance

Added in-line guidance and contextual cues throughout the journey, providing the right information at the right moment to reduce errors and improve usability.

Personalization for Partner Types

Tailored workflows, dashboards, and interactions for different partner roles, ensuring relevance, efficiency, and a more engaging experience for each user type.

Partner & Consumer Language

Differentiated communication for partners and end-users: partner-facing content uses precise, workflow-oriented terminology, while consumer-facing messaging remains simple and approachable, ensuring clarity and relevance for each audience.

Journey Flows

Partner onboarding journeys for F-Secure Horizon were mapped to clarify how partners move from platform access to preparing cybersecurity services for launch. Structuring the process into clear stages helped reduce ambiguity and provided partners with a more guided onboarding experience.

Design System Components

The onboarding interface was built using F-Secure’s existing design system to ensure visual consistency across the Horizon platform. Existing components were reused wherever possible, while a few additional elements were introduced to support onboarding-specific guidance and interactions.

Prototype & Validation

Interactive prototypes were developed to demonstrate the onboarding journey and support stakeholder validation. These prototypes enabled quick feedback cycles and helped refine the clarity and structure of the onboarding flow before implementation.

The enhanced onboarding experience successfully streamlined the partner journey, improved usability, and established a unified structure that reduced confusion and friction.

Results

Based on stakeholder testing and evaluations, the redesigned onboarding journey is expected to:

• • Reduce partner onboarding time by ~30%.

  • Improve clarity and engagement across all stages of the process.

  • Decrease support requests from new partners.

  • Receive positive internal feedback from sales and marketing teams on flow efficiency and visual clarity.

Strategic Impact