Principal Product Designer @ BlackRock
Income Tax Estimation at Intuit
Self employed businesses in the UK are required to submit and pay their income tax to HMRC every year. We launched Income Tax Estimation in QuickBooks to help them track their income tax in real time.
Duration
10 months
Role
Lead product designer on the project (led 3 other designers)
Impact
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14k unique users
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60% returning more than once since
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average of 4.1 views per unique user
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Customer confidence tracking at 29 (+15 points increase from beta to GA)
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Serviceable available market before launch: 714k, after launch: 4.3M (due to upcoming government changes)
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Nominated for Scott Cook and Brad Smith awards internally
“This is brilliant. Hugely helpful for self-employed people such as I am. I am delighted. Thank you!” - Sole trader
Process
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27+ hours of customer empathy (36 interviews)
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6 rounds of experiments
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6 hours of D4D workshops
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Mapped out and prototyped the E2E ideal state experience
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Launched a BETA experience in 6 weeks
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Iterated based on VOC 14+ time
Process Overview
1. Validating key assumptions through rapid experimentation
I collaborated closely with PM and PMM partners on validating key business and customer assumptions through rapid experimentation. Experiments validated our assumption of building income tax in QuickBooks will lead to more revenue for the business and enhance the confidence of users.
2. Uncovering core customer problem
I then led interviews to dig deeper into the challenges customers face. We learned that customers often don’t have an idea of their income tax until the year end and they don’t understand which expenses they can claim back and which they can’t. Simplifying expense management and helping customers track their income tax in real time was going to provide customer benefit.
3. Understanding the domain and upcoming regulatory changes
6.6 million people in the UK need to prepare and file a Self Assessment. In addition, HMRC is planning to require self-employed businesses to submit their Self Assessment via financial management software under Making Tax Digital regulation in 2024. This meant that we can increase the reach of Quickbooks and deliver benefits to those that need it the most.
I met up regularly with my PM, PMM and compliance partners to develop a deep understanding of how income tax works. In the meantime, I carried out competitor research and created personas based on insights.
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4. Facilitating workshops
I led multiple 20+ person design workshops in order to get the cross-functional team to empathise with the customer, map out their existing journey with their paint points, ideate on these and align on our ideal state. I took the brainstormed ideas and turned them into high-fidelity designs, which I later tested with customers.
5. Onboarding new designers to the team
During the project, another scrum team joined us so that we could deliver faster to customers. Two more product designers joined a part time content designer and I. I helped them onboard to the project quickly by explaining the domain, customer problems and our work so far. I also found the most effective ways of working across the 4 of us by understanding their styles and staying empathetic to each one of them.
6. Launched the beta experience
We launched the beta experience to 20% of our self employed users within 6 weeks.
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7. Continuous iteration based on in-product feedback and usability testing
We implemented an in-product feedback widget to track how confident the functionality made our customers feel. As we determined how we can improve the experience through the widget, I simultaneously ran numerous usability tests. Feedback through the widget and continued customer testing helped us iterate on what we launched.
This led to a 15 point increase in our confidence score from March to October.
8. Crafting a vision in the meantime
As we iterated on the beta experience, designers and I visualised our ideal state. UX technologist on the team brought this vision to life by coding our designs. We used it to provoke the rest of the team and organisation on where we want to head in the future.
9. Going general availability
We ramped the beta up to our 100% self employed user base 1.5 weeks after the beta launch and announced general availability 7 weeks after.
10. Service design blueprinting
After going general availability, I facilitated numerous service design blueprinting workshops with 30+ individuals to map out how the user journey will be impacted with the new regulations.
This laid the foundation for the next big initiative (Making Tax Digital for Income Tax Self Assessment), which reimagines this feature based on the upcoming regulatory changes. One of the product teams has been working on this project since then.
