Summary:

One of the most painful and time-consuming parts of tax time for accountants is collecting their clients’ documents, as they must constantly request them via multiple calls, emails, and texts. They spend a significant portion of their time on this “mindless” task, which prevents them from taking on additional clients and growing their business. 

At Intuit, we questioned how to make the tax document collection process painless and easy for accountants and their clients. Our solution: Intuit Link, a product which makes it easy for accountants to request specific documents and for clients to provide them.

Because I’m on Intuit’s Widgets team, we took this problem one step further by considering how we could create a document sharing widget which can be used across our Accountant, Small Business, and Consumer business units. Ultimately, we created the Intuit Vault widget, which was integrated into the Intuit Link product. 

Here’s the core use case for Intuit Link and Intuit Vault:

Accountant Angela wants her client Chris’ 1099-INT tax document from his Generic Bank account. Angela goes to Intuit Link, creates a request for that tax document, then emails the request to Chris. Chris then receives the request, and after creating an Intuit Link account, uses the product to send the requested document. Through Intuit Link, he can send the document in one of two ways: a) By uploading the document, or b) By connecting his Generic Bank account to Intuit Link, and allowing the product to import the document directly from his bank. This document transfer function is powered by the Intuit Vault widget, the project which my team created. 

I started working on this project during its second iteration and I knew there was a lot to clean up. However, I wanted to be aware of why things were they way they were before proposing changes. I started by conducting my due diligence, probing into details with the engineering team, PMs, and designer, to understand why things were and the problems that needed to be fixed. I also participated in customer research to understand the issues directly from the customers’ perspective.

Ultimately, the Intuit Vault widget powered the Intuit Link product, and we saved accountants over 21 days in their tax filing process. Our team also won an Intuit award for this work!

Interaction details:

The trickiest set of interaction details I worked on was around the “Import Results Page,” which showed customers what they were and were not able to import. I learned that the current state caused clients confusion and doubt in the offering because it did not help users understand whether they were able to import the correct document, and the import rate was lower than expected. After rounds of usability research, we found that making it easier for clients to understand what they were/weren’t able to import would increase confidence and usage of the offering.

There were many sketches, design reviews, prototyping, and user testing, which helped us iterate and land on our final solution.

I found that to increase clarity in the widget, we needed to update the hierarchy in how the imported results were displayed. Since clients enter the product with a specific goal in mind, e.g. "Provide your 1099-INT from Generic Bank,” the Import Results Page would need to specify whether they were successful in that task and think, “Yes, I got it!” or “No, I don’t have it yet.” 

The original design did not clearly specify whether they were successful, and was a clear source of confusion. In the final design, as seen below, we ensured that clients knew if a document was not available.

The second way I improved clarity in the widget was by using a descriptive naming system for the imported documents. The import results page lists the imported documents (if we find other tax documents from a particular bank, we’ll also import them), but due to the text count limitations, especially prevalent in mobile, the discerning part of the name was always cut off. Thus, I updated the naming system (working with architects and developers to ensure this was possible), so clients could easily identify which document(s) they were able to import. In the example below, we show how our nomenclature still allowed for clarity, even with long names.

Another area I addressed on the Import Results Page on was the “Save Credentials” functionality. When clients connect their banks to Intuit Vault, they enter their bank credentials into the product so the product can make the connection and retrieve their documents. It is extremely beneficial for clients to save their credentials because it will allow the product to continually check if new tax documents are created (e.g. the bank corrects a tax document), and ensures documents can be imported immediately when they are created by the bank. We tested a variety of ways to present the “Save Credential” functionality through in-person and remote usability studies, and found clients were most likely to save their credentials when the option was presented on the Import Results Page, after the user sees the benefit from using the product. 

The Team:

I was the designer on the Import Results Page for Intuit Vault. I worked closely with our front and back-end developers, our front and back-end product manager, architect, and other designer who worked on other pages in the Intuit Vault flow. I partnered with a visual designer for feedback and input, while I created the initial visual design specifications. I created sketches, wireframes, prototypes, and helped run user research.