UX Design & Strategy — August 2014 - June 2015 — Huge, Inc.
OVERVIEW
Redesign the ONESOURCE tax software into a unified suite of products that simplifies the lives of accountants and increases their productivity.
THE ASK
Make ONESOURCE as friendly as consumer tax software (TurboTax), but for experts.
We were given the task to create a UX interaction model and visual style guide that could be applied to tax products within the ONESOURCE suite. After looking at the products holistically, we applied our findings and design decisions to a pilot product called Tax Provision.
MY ROLE
Experience Lead — Lead UX designer overseeing the vision & strategy phase, detailed wireframes, and designs. I conducted user research, led client workshops, created wireframes, presented work to clients, while leading a small team of UX & visual designers.
TEAM
Sophie Kleber - Product Strategy Director
Judy Podraza - Experience Lead
Tara Hosseinipour - Sr. Interaction Designer
Led Brasil - Sr. Interaction Designer
Nicklesh Soni - Art Director
Chloe Wong - Sr. Visual Designer
DESIGNING FOR ACCOUTANTS
We were designing for users who we were unfamiliar with and had little or no context about their workflow. Plus, the initial ONESOURCE experience was so unintuitive, that we needed to conduct observational user research to begin to understand the product. I put together a discussion guide and sat in on user interviews in order to better understand the needs of our users.
"ONESOURE is not intuitive... I call my customer support rep at last once a week when I have a question I can't solve."
Tax Professional, Reviewer at Bank of America
THREE CORE USERS
While there is no single ONESOURCE user, there is a common mindset. Tax value accuracy and precision above all else.
Preparer
- Performs day-to-day work.
- Conducts research.
- Investigates unusual transactions.
Reviewer.
- Reviews first level filings.
- Requests required documentation.
- Oversees workflows related to reviews
Manager.
- Coordinates all workflows.
- Sets up new users.
- Manages permissions across all users.
- Suggests new tools to management.
GLOBAL NAVIGATION & INTERACTION MODEL
Through a massive content audit of 15 ONESOURCE products, we identified global components relevant to every product. I recommended that ONESOURCE users have access to core functionality such as a "Home" page, Folders, Search, Calendar, Support, and user settings across all products.
A global header with smart shortcuts, routing users to their work as fast and directly as possible.
A PERSONALIZED HOME SCREEN
Since user needs and tasks varied greatly for more senior accountants, we recommended that the ONESOURCE homepage be personalized based on the user's role and showcased content that was right for them.
Wireframes for a Preparer.
Final Homepage designs.
Redesigning the Tax Provision user experience
We identified 5 page templates as the core of the Tax Provision product.
We designed various way for users to quickly review and compare Datasets as well as be able to navigate deeper within the data at a Lead Sheet and Component level.
We designed the Landing Page experience to more quickly ‘Compare and Review’ by surfacing the pre-assigned datasets at first.
The goal was to enable the accountant to jump back onto their most recent work or quickly choose datasets from a list of for review or comparison.
A horizontal navigation allowed for quicker access to the pre-assigned dataset list and ability to preview deeper into the units.
We oriented the user in context through navigable breadcrumbs and elevated the ability to compare datasets.
Explore the final prototype
Working with our developer, we used sample tax data to create a working HTML prototype of our final designs. This prototype allowed us to make sure all our interactions between screens, templates, tiles, and data points felt intuitive. Additionally, our client's technology team had a reference of how to implement our designs into working code.