Application redesign

Application process redesign for small business employee tax credit program.

Overview

Innovation Refunds is a financial services company that provides access to specialized government funding to Small and Midsize Businesses (SMBs). The platform simplifies tax credit applications, making it easier to access financial incentives. The UI/UX Refresh project was aimed at streamlining the user experience and improve accessibility, addressing navigation issues and unclear instructions.

Background

The Design team received customer feedback highlighting frustrations with navigating the platform and unclear instructions. This feedback highlighted the need for a UI/UX refresh to improve usability and accessibility. Critical areas targeted included simplifying language, providing clear instructions, adding interactive guidance, offering real-time status updates, and optimizing for mobile use.

Solution

The Design team set out to redesgin and enhance the application process to increase transparency and empower users to navigate the application and apply for tax credits with greater ease. This redesign led to a 35% increase in user engagement, 40% increase in task completion and reduced errors by 30%, increasing overall user satisfaction.

Role

I funtioned as player/coach to a team of 2 UX designers and 1 content designer, working with stakeholders and engineering teams to ensure viability and execution.

Deliverables

Customer feedback

Empathy map

User personas

Usability testing

Journey map

Desktop & mobile designs

Design system

Engineering hand-off

Design process

In order to set forth a phased approach for delivery to stakeholders, I developed a high-level outline of the design team's process methodology. This allowed the greater product team to level-set expectations for delivery of required design artifacts.

01. Empathize

Conducted user interviews, defined user personas, and performed UX audit of current platform.

02. Plan

Synthesized research and established specific and measurable objectives and plan project scope.

03. Design

Developed user flows and high-fidelity prototypes, continually refining designs through cycles of testing.

04. Deliver

Handed off design files to engineering team, along with regular communication and recurring review sessions.

Gathering feedback

In order to understand the challenges, I led the product team in conducting user research of small and mid-size business owners to gather insights and identify customer pain points. This phase involved direct engagement with users through surveys and customer interviews to gather qualitative and quantitative data.

I found it difficult to complete my application on mobile. The interface was confusing and didn't scale well on my phone.

The mobile experience was suboptimal. The interface didn't adapt well to my device.

The instructions were hard to understand, and I often felt lost during the process.

The instructions were not clear at all. I had to guess what to do next.

There were several usability issues with the application. The unclear instructions led to errors, ant it took too long.

Using the application on my mobile was a nightmare. The navigation was poor.

Establishing empathy

The empathy map provided valuable insights into our target users by capturing their perspectives, thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. Through our user research, including interviews and surveys, we identified key pain points and needs. This empathy map guided our user-centric design decisions, ensuring we effectively addressed the challenges faced by our users and created a more intuitive, accessible, and satisfying experience on the Innovation Refunds platform.

Defining our users

After gather our user insights, we translated this feedback into user personas for each customer segment from user interviews, surveys, and data gathering. These dynamic personas detailed demographics, goals, challenges, and behaviors, grounding our design decisions in empathy. Throughout the design process, personas informed ideation, prototyping, and usability testing, ensuring solutions resonated with user needs and creating an intuitive, accessible application experience.

Business owner #1
Business owner #2
Business owner #3

Planning our objectives

To set forth a tactical project plan, I got to work creating user stories to translate customer feedback into actionable objectives. These stories focused on specific tasks and goals, providing a clear framework for the design process and ensuring our solutions addressed real user needs. These stories also served as tactical action items for our engineering team to begin building upon completion of design.

Business owner #1
User story

As a business owner, I want to easily navigate the Innovation Refunds application so that I can quickly find the information and forms I need to apply for tax credits.

Key takeaways

Clear and intuitive navigation structure

Key sections easily accessible from the main menu

Search function available to quickly locate specific content

Business owner #2
User story

As a business owner, I want clear instructions and guidance throughout the application process so that I can complete the forms accurately and without confusion.

Key takeaways

Detailed, easy-to-understand instructions

Interactive tooltips and help icons for additional guidance

Clear error messaging with specific corrective actions

Business owner #3
User story

As a business owner, I want to access to comprehensive support resources if I encounter issues so that I can resolve problems quickly and continue with my application.

Key takeaways

Support section with FAQs, troubleshooting guides, and contact options

Live chat support during business hours

Responsive times for support questions within 24 hours

Returning users
User story

As a returning user, I want to see real-time updates on my application status so that I can track my progress and know what to expect next.

Key takeaways

Dashboard displays current application status

Notifications for updates or required actions

Timeline view of the application process

Mobile users
User story

As a mobile user, I want the Innovation Refunds application to be fully optimized for my mobile device so that I can complete my application smoothly while on the go.

Key takeaways

Fully responsive application experience

Touch-friendly interface components

Optimized load times for mobile performance

General users
User story

As a user, I want to see modern, intuitive UI elements, so that I can more easily navigate the application process.

Key takeaways

Material design UI components

Intentional use of different form elements

More tactile user experience

Setting expectations

Kickoff

Before getting started on the designs, the team met with stakeholders to present our findings, and understand objectives and timelines for the project. After getting buy-in to begin work, we then set out to identify and prioritize the critical goals for MVP to ensure a timely and successful launch. Throughout the project, I ran point with stakeholders and product teams to provide continual transparency, and remove any potential blockers preventing the design team from completing our objectives.

Objectives

To ensure a successful and timely launch, I aligned the business on the following priorities:

Mobile-friendly user experience

Drive conversion through a more intuitive user experience

Allow users to monitor and track application status

Mapping it out

After we had a good sense of our user needs, along with project requirements, the team and I got to work building out a journey map to visualize the user experience througout the application process. This process highlighted pain points and opportunities for improvement, helping us design a more seamless and satisfying user experience. By understanding the entire journey, we could ensure that each touchpoint was optimized for usability and accessibility.

Usability testing

I led the design team in conducted multiple usability testing sessions with a diverse group of small and mid-size business owners. These sessions aimed to observe users interacting with the application and identify any pain points or areas of confusion. Participants were asked to complete specific tasks, providing real-time insights into the user experience. The usability tests revealed several key pain points, including difficulties with navigation, unclear instructions, and issues with mobile usability. These findings highlighted areas that required improvement to enhance the overall user experience.

Dashboard

1Dashboard is sparse and lacks adequate information (application status, etc.) for the user understand where their application is in the process.

Dashboard
Document upload

1The navigation tabs (User Profile, Company Info, etc.) are not prominent enough and were overlooked by users.

2Users were not prompted to complete all three tabs before being able to move on to the next section, causing frustration.

3File upload funtionality is clunky and confusing for users.

Document upload
Banking information

1Radio buttons are placed too close to each other, causing frustration for the user. Additionally, the styling is too minimalistic, causing users to overlook many questions.

2Estimated refund amount needs to be better integrated into the overall design.

3User assistance section feels disconnected from the rest of the form and gets overlooked by users.

Banking information

Kicking off the redesign

Once all user feedback was thouroughly reviewed and synthesized, the design team kicked off the design phase by creating a refreshed interface with a clean, intuitive layout. The goal was to simplify the overall look and feel, making it easier for users to navigate and interact with the application. This involved careful consideration of typography, spacing, and visual hierarchy to ensure clarity and ease of use.

Content collection

Our talented UX Designers got to work redesigning our application experience, incorporating simplified language and clear instructions throughout the interface to enhance user comprehension. Users could easily understand the required actions by breaking down complex content into more manageable steps, significantly reducing frustration and errors. This approach ensured a smoother and more efficient task completion process.

Each business entity was expanded to provide the user with more information about the status of each application and what to expect next in the process.
Material design components were used throughout the UI to allow the user to more clearly answer each question with minimized user error. Tooltips were utilized to provide further instruction if questions weren't imediately apparent to the user.
Modals were leveraged to isolate specific actions such as adding a relationship to the ownership info section.
Each relationship is visible in condensed format, along with a success toast message, to affirm each action taken by the user.

File uploads

The UX team then turned its attention to enhancing file uploads, allowing users to upload documents automatically via an API connection or manually via file upload. This enhancement included interactive guidance features, such as tooltips and contextual help, to assist users throughout the upload process. These elements provided real-time assistance, ensuring users could easily understand and complete the file upload steps without leaving the interface.

Payroll software companies were added via API connections in order to streamline the process rather relying on the user to manually upload each document individually, reducing errors and streamiling the overall application process.
Users are able to securely sign in to their rescpective payroll software providers in order to verify credentials prior to linking necessary payroll information.
Success messages were leveraged as interstitial pages to alert the user that their payroll software was successfully connected. If a connection was unsuccessful, the user is provided an error message, along with instructions to correct the error.
Once the payroll software connection is successful, the user can view all documents ported over to their application with the ability to manually adjust each document.

Design system

Building the system

Design Variables: Established variables for colors, typography, spacing, and other styles to maintain consistency and facilitate updates.

Component Library: Built a comprehensive component library in Figma, including all UI elements and their states.

Documentation: Created thorough documentation outlining the usage guidelines for each component and style, ensuring that all team members could easily apply the design system.

Creating the Design Language

Typography and Color Palette: Selected fonts and color schemes that reflect the brand’s identity and enhance readability.

Iconography: Developed a consistent set of icons to be used across the portal for visual clarity and ease of navigation.

UI Components: Created a library of reusable UI components, such as buttons, forms, and modals, ensuring consistency across all pages.

Buttons
Text fields
Selections
Timeline tracker
Alerts
Tooltips

Delivering the designs

In the final phase, we worked closely with the development team to implement the refined design elements. Utilizing Figma's dev-mode features, we efficiently handed off designs, ensuring seamless communication and precise implementation. I set up several sessions with our engineering teams to walk through the various sections of the file to mitigate any questions during development.

Various screen sizes were provided to the engineering teams providing breakpoints, ensuring graceful degredation of the content.

Impact and outcomes

The Innovation Refunds platform was successfully redesigned, improving user engagement, usability, mobile optimization, and performance metrics. The project enhanced user experience, meeting business goals by simplifying and making the application process more user-friendly.

35%

User engagement

User engagement increased significantly, measured by session duration and interactions, indicating that users found the redesigned platform more engaging and interactive.

20%

Returning users

Returning users rose by 20%, demonstrating greater satisfaction and usability with the updated platform and encouraging repeat visits.

40%

Task completion

Critical task completion times were reduced by 40%, streamlining the application process and making it more efficient for users to complete necessary actions.

30%

User errors

Due to more precise instructions and improved guidance, user errors decreased by 30%, leading to a smoother and less frustrating user experience.

25%

Mobile sessions

Mobile sessions increased by 25%, showing that the mobile optimization efforts made the platform more accessible and user-friendly on mobile devices.

45%

Mobile users

Mobile user satisfaction improved by 45%, reflecting the positive impact of the mobile-friendly redesign and enhanced user experience on mobile devices.