This research and design project was conducted as part of my MSc in User Experience Design at IADT with a team of two other students. The project brief was to redesign the Irish Revenue mobile experience to better suit the needs of PAYE customers. The result was RevLite, a tax onboarding application that reverses the current tax credit claim procedure by personalising the experience.
- Primary User Research
- Persona and Journey Map
- Low and High fidelity wireframes
- Functioning Prototype built in Figma
- User Testing and Iteration
A personalised approach to Revenue
Problem Statement & Validation
Research conducted by Revenue as well as third party tax services indicates that almost 57% of Irish citizens are missing out on tax claims that they are entitled to. The current Revenue online experience is a web application which poorly adapts to mobile, and failed several heuristic analysis points on usability. I undertook a competitor analysis to highlight potential opportunities for an improved experience for Revenue users.
Observations
To back up my desk research, myself and the team conducted user research on the Revenue with 5 participants, asking them to perform a set of 5 tasks using a Think Aloud method. This allowed us to observe how the user navigated through the service, where they struggled and what they considered to be important. Using feedback from the 5 observations the team we then created affinity maps and I theme-coded the transcripts in order pinpoint the key issues across all users.
Survey
Our team also conducted an online survey with 103 participants, in which they were asked about their experience with tax, whether they actively engage with it and how they felt about Revenue services both online and offline. The three main issues that were highlighted were:
Problem 1: Difficult to discover entitlements.
“I could be eligible for something that I’m not taking advantage of, but I don’t really know to be honest.”
Problem 2: In app guidance and additional help
“There’s a good chance if I was looking for something I would have to go through a couple to rule them out, that it’s not there.”
Problem 3: In app features are not complete or usable.
“There is a large amount of information on the website and it can be difficult to find what you need or some times to know what you need.”
The results of both the observation and the survey clearly indicated that the base level issue with Revenue is that the user needs to know what tax they are entitled to and that the current system has little to no on-boarding to help them discover and ensure they are getting those entitlements.
This led to the following How Might We statement:
How might we streamline the tax credits claims procedure so that the user only see what is important to them?
Solution
Persona and User Journey
From the research and observations we developed a series of personas which I then segmented in to one major persona, Jeff, that would help focus the solution. I also created a ‘to-be’ scenario and storyboard based on Jeff’s needs and goals and how we might solve them with the new Revenue app.
Design and Prototype
Once happy the personas I created a task flow for the screens we’d need to develop for the app. The focus was on an effective on-boarding, one that would allow the user to take ownership of their taxes in a clear, step by step method. Based on this task flow the team created screen sketches for possible solutions and we settled on my 3 step tax summary on-boarding flow.
Final Product Screens
The first screen of RevLite gives the user a brief introduction to the app and its intentions including introducing the features, language and support system.
Once logged in, the user is guided through a tax credit on boarding flow for that year. The majority of PAYE users use Revenue to claim tax credits, so the decision was to bring at least one of these claims right to the start of the app.
The app separates the tax claims in to three basic sections, Milestones, Your Family & Health and Jobs and Finances. In each of these steps it suggests possible tax credit claims, removing the need for the user to seek them out themselves.
The user is then given a tax summary of what they might be entitled to, building enthusiasm and reassuring the user that RevLite is there to help them claim everything they’ve earned.
Throughout the app the user is prompted with positive feedback, and guided using illustrations and clear typography. Illustrations for the prototype were gathered from undraw.io
RevLite includes a clear homepage where a user can access all the basic features of PAYE revenue without having to scroll or search.
The app also includes a tax summary for the past four years of earnings. This page would replicate some of the information contained in forms like a P60 but in a digital, interactive way rather than the traditional PDF.
User Testing
We conducted user testing with 7 participants aged between 21 and 30 years which we identified as our entry level PAYE audience. The tests were conducted in person over the course of one day, each session was approximately 30minutes and included a set of tasks to perform on the app and a post-test interview.
The results of the test were largely positive and all users reported that this version of Revenue was much easier in terms of discover and explanation than the original Revenue experience. The tests led to some iterations of the prototype, mainly around clarity of language and hierarchy of information.
Second iteration to the app included separating out the tax credits on boarding section to three clean steps to ensure that the user has the time to take in each options. I also redesigned the dashboard to only show the most important information up front with a button to view more.
Lauren Day 