RememBear is possibly the first password manager that is actually fun to use. Extremely user-friendy, multi-platform app that saves and autofills your passwords to save you time and keep you safe online.
This was by far the most exciting product I’ve ever worked on. It presented opportunities and challenges so unique that I could only do so much research wise. The development started in 2016 – the year I joined TunnelBear – and took almost two years. And for the most part I was the only designer on the team.
By the time TunnelBear was an established brand with it’s flagship VPN product well known around the world. But could we build a second product that would be just as successful? It was a big question for me. As a new hire, I had to make sure I deliver the top-notch quality work and keep the design bar as high as it was established before me.
When it comes to illustrating and animating bears we, at TunnelBear, always had one very important and unavoidable requirement – our bears could only do bears’ things. It basically means we can’t draw bears wearing peoples’ clothes, bears working on computers, or bears conversing like people. By doing so we avoid making the bears look and behave gimmicky. Needless to say, it makes it so much harder to figure our the ideas and concepts.
Bears Everywhere
It was very ambitious for our small team to take on a challenge to make RememBear available on four most popular platforms. However, the team made it happen and I’m very proud of our effort.
Being secure doesn’t have to be complicated (or boring)
If you happen to have a non-tech-savvy friend or a family member chances are RememBear would be a perfect password manager for them. How do I know? Well, my parents are the RememBear users now and for the record, my mom is the least tech-savvy person I know. She still uses a flip phone.
Don’t let the playful Bears fool you, RememBear uses seriously secure state-of-the-art technology.
How did we know whether designs or illustrations are ready to be shipped? Well, sometimes it took dozens of iterations but when you run something by the team and people laugh or chuckle you know you’ve got a winner… This illustration was a great example of that principle. It depicts our founder Ryan Dochuk in bear’s hug.
Gamification
Some call them “delightful experiences” or “AHA moments”. Game design gave the world a bunch of principles that are applicable to product design. In my opinion, the most important ones are how can we keep users hooked in engagement loops and how can we reward users to stir up their motivation?
In RememBear, we use the principle of progressive onboarding – the user is getting rewarded with achievements for virtually any tasks she accomplishes for the first time. Be it adding new website credentials, new credit card or secure note – there’s always a funny bear animation to celebrate a user’s achievement.
