While I talk about 3 consumer facing applications, there was really just one problem I was trying to solve.

COULD TAX MOBILE APPLICATIONS BE USED YEAR ROUND?

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What Problems needed to be solved for the users?

How do we make something that is typically used just once a year into something that could be used all the time. As you might be able to see with the experience map above, that was the goal. The only one that couldn't really be used all year was the 1040EZ app, for obvious reasons. So the 3 apps were:

1. The 1040EZ mobile app
2. The Emerlard Card. If you had a refund, you could put the balance on this card.
3. The H&R Block Brand Application. It was where you could see when you'd get a refund, upload documents and other things.

The old app (its design and flow above) had a lot of issues, but it was used a lot. The Omniture data was super useful in seeing just how it was utilized each season. And, when someone would come in and then drop back out because they saw nothing useful during "off" season.

The one super cool thing about applications used by everyone who pays taxes is instead of a persona, you come at it with behaviors. A behavior you can change. A persona not so much. So we had behaviors like "Amateur Expert" and "First-timer". It allowed for me to dig into behaviors in general and do some major time on comparative analysis instead of just comparative. I don't care what the competitor does. Let's do the very best we can and see if it resonates with the users.

How it was solved

I did a fair amount of work on the flows for each application as well. I wanted to focus on the call drivers and the year-round aspect as my areas of opportunity, but in order to be sure what we needed, My goal was to design for the 3-5-year, and then pull back what could be done this year. The goal always working on what would make it useful or more useful for someone year round.

The Brand app

I followed all the typical UX processes. Stakeholder interviews, tons of research, and one thing we had at Block was our own usability lab. We took an old office on the ground floor and turned it into a usability lab with a retail and mobile app section with 1-way mirrors, cameras and the whole shebang for $66k. And test we did. All the time. My favorite was when we were trying to decide on a look and feel for the Brand app. Everyone was convinced we should go with Blocks as the buttons. Because what doesn't scream the company but green and blocks. I laugh because I was convinced we should present the testers with some other options.

Last minute I asked the visual designer to make a version with round buttons instead. Some of the comments stunned people. Stunned. "The squares make me think I need to carefully click on the icon itself, but the round area makes me think the entire thing is a button." The background image changed based on geolocation, so I thought the round buttons let people see that background better, and also allowed for what I felt was a cleaner look. Apparently the users thought so too.

A great example of using comparative analysis was the Documents section. I did a ton of looking at other applications that did documents well like Box and Drop Box. There were quite a few of them so we did an ecosystem map to see which would be the most useful in coming up with a solution for us. Basically I ended up with the hypothesis of a freelancer. As a freelancer, I need to upload receipts all the time so they don't fade to nothing, and be able to tell the app what type of a receipt and category, and be able to take a picture with my camera. Of course, we then tested that assumption for validation.

The Emerald App and 1040EZ

The Emerald application as a team we didn't have time to work on, so I farmed that out to a local UX firm. In the end we had to take that back in-house, but I was responsible for the engagement.

The 1040EZ however was all mine. I was really lucky to work with some amazing developers on this one. In meetings this guy would often tell me they couldn't do what I was asking, and 20 minutes later he'd have it done asking me if that was what I had in mind. One of the larger challenges we had here was OCR. These days we don't think of it as a challenge, but W-2's are different across all the States, and finding someone who could do OCR right was wild.

Of course, like everything else, we tested it over and over. I did all the prototypes as well while I was at Block. I probably did at least 15 or more while I was there. I worked on everything from our digital application to anything that needed to be tested.

Before I left IBM, I made my proposal to make the PDF into a HTML file so the Oncologist could work with it to see other clinical trials and make an even more informed decision.

How I measured success

The beauty of having your own usability lab at your disposal was doing testing on a regular basis. Of course we used other measures of success like surveys, usertesting.com, Omniture, feedback data and others. A great combo of qualitative and quantitative research.