EasyTax is a minimal and easy-to-use tax tool website that aims to help people build custom tax profiles and optimise user information to receive the best tax return. After market research and user interviews, this design prototype was produced to make taxes less of a hassle by implementing minimal design and an organized information hierarchy. This prototype was designed during my time at a Canadian top-5 bank innovation team.
Problem: Taxes are Complicated and Intimidating
Most people grow up and have their parents or an accountant to do their taxes. Taxes have always been an intimidating part of adulting and students are not taught about the process in school. Taxes do not need to be complicated but most tax tools make it appear like it is. To solve this issue, this prototype was designed to be minimal, informative and easy to use for people with all levels of understanding of the tax process.
User Interviews
Two main types of users:
- New to Taxes: younger users doing taxes with no past experience
- Experienced with taxes: older user that has used other tax tool products in the past
Example Interview Questions:
- What knowledge do you have about the idea of doing taxes?
- What are emotions that you feel approaching the tax season?
- Tell me about what frustrates you about using your current tax products?
- Describe your process/perspective of when you complete your taxes?
- Having no past experience with completing taxes, what do you expect the process should look like?
User Research: User Painpoints
Complicated Process
- There are so many different types of tax forms. First-time users do not know what forms to use.
- Too much manual entry, not enough automation.
Where to Find Resources
- There are resources on taxes but hard to find the right ones for each user.
- Not all information is relevant to each user, custom-built profiles.
User Personas
Jesse
Age: 21 years old
Location: Downtown Toronto
Occupation: Full-time Student / Part-time at CoCo's Bubble Tea
Bio
Jesse is a full-time student, studying graphic design at Toronto Metropolitan University. As a full-time student, Jesse is in classes around 24 hours a week while juggling 14 hours of her part-time job. Jesse does not go out too often to save money for school and rent. She plans to repay her student loan as soon as possible. Jesse's parents used to manage her taxes but since she moved to a residence closer to school, she decided to start being more independent.
Goal
Jesse's goal is to be more independent and part of this goal is to start managing her own finances and taxes. Without a clear idea of where to start, Jesse needs a place where she can receive customized help on taxes and financial tips.
Frustrations
Jesse is confused about how taxes work and where to start. She searches on YouTube on where to start but not everything is really relevant to her. Jesse wants a more simple and easy-to-use method of doing her taxes.
Winston
Age: 42 years old
Location: Suburbs of Toronto
Occupation: Full-Time Business Owner
Bio
Winston is a self-employed business owner who runs several business services. He is proud to be a self-employed entrepreneur as it allows him to balance time with his family.
Goal
Some of his businesses provide services that take cash as payment and may be difficult to manage taxes. With several income streams, Winston needs a product that can analyse and automate his income streams.
Frustrations
Several income streams are difficult to manage and manually entering his information for different businesses is time-consuming. Would love an automated method of analysing and completing different forms.
Mid-Fi Wireframes
Due to time constraints, our team completed market research to find common design elements of a tax tool and created a base skeleton of our design. I was inspired by aspects of existing tax tool designs to make my design intuitive and recognizable as a financial tool.
Hi-Fi Wireframes
The design of the tax tool needed to fit in with the existing tools and design guidelines. The high-fidelity wireframes included the addition of brand elements, business language and all design elements added.
Final Prototype
This is a completed working Figma prototype of all functionality. This was used to show stakeholders what our product could look like as part of our current service lineup.
