Lab Bank Taxes
Lab Bank Taxes
0-1 DESIGN | Lead Product Designer
10 WEEK VALIDATION & MVP DEFINITION
The Opportunity
Lab Bank Taxes is a stealth brand created for a large, technology-focused bank whose objective is to create a groundbreaking tax solution, poised to disrupt a susceptible industry. Based on unmet user needs and business goals, the ideal solution would offer a streamlined tax filing processes, provide users access to unclaimed refunds, establish a cross-marketing engine for tailored financial product suggestions, and leverage user data to optimize underwriting across the broader company product ecosystem. More-over, this solution would serve as a foundational platform for comprehensive personal finance management, embodying the bank’s commitment to reshape the financial landscape and enhance the user’s financial well-being.
Highlights
Onboarding leverages the user’s banking data and last year’s 1040 to accelerate tax filing, averaging a 90% filing readiness once completing the flow
A personalized tax hub allows the user to traverse the experience at their own pace, giving them the confidence of making progress while providing the flexibility to revisit areas of their tax filing throughout the year
The dynamic refund experience explores refund amount progress and redemption options, no matter what time of year, while also providing instant access to funds and an integrated IRS e-file submission when taxes are ready to be sent off
The Approach
The objective was to validate if the mission, ambition and strategic objectives for the new business resonate. This was executed by understanding user and market pain points, unmet needs that will support adoption and engagement for Lab Bank Taxes as well as developing confidence that the MVP would provide an initial problem-solution fit in order to influence and prioritize the product roadmap.
Desk Research was used to establish a tablestakes user flow as well as determine where Lab Bank Taxes could differentiate
Competitive Analysis across both large industry players as well as neophytes was used to help understand what was successful in-market as well as where newer entry players were looking to gain market share.
Leveraging existing Lab Bank customer data, existing quant survey research, and initial ethnographic interviews, User Archetypes began to take shape
By targeting user’s with a similar banking background to Lab Bank customers, as well as those who were digital or digital-curious tax filers, several User Archetypes were established. These would continue to be refined based on realistic MMP and MVP product capabilities, Lab Bank Taxes business objectives, and ongoing ethnographic interviews.
Industry Expert & Ethnographic Interviews were conducted throughout the various stages of the validation to continue to refine our direction
Tailoring discussion guides to various industry experts as well as the different segmented users helped refine our segmentation targeting over time as well as uncover a priority within the unmet needs of a vast user base.
Team Workshops were used to ideate around key findings, using our cross functional business, engineering, product and design pods to push blue sky concepts that would improve the user experience (brand, animation, user journey) as well as craft a differentiated product feature set
Eventually these concepts were synthesized into concrete, research-backed points of differentiation to further test through more qual and quant user testing.
A final user flow was created for alignment across business, engineering, product and design pods
This artifact was then used to inform the final end-to-end clickable prototype experience.
In order to create an initial perspective for the Go-to-Market strategy, Market Viability Tests (MVT) were run, providing metrics that sussed out which messaging drove users to engage
Testing assets were run through Facebook, Instagram and Google. The language that was identified as successful influenced the polishing of messaging across the experience.
The Solution
The final experience was built on a flexible framework that will continue to scale with the dynamic nature of the tax filing process. The product allows for seamless integration for existing Lab Bank customers, minimizing any obstacles or costs associated with switching to this new service. Additionally, the product was designed to accommodate 90% of American tax filing scenarios at launch, with plans to support more complex situations within the first year.
The visual identity was crafted to express a precise and minimal look and feel, utilizing strong visual and information hierarchy as well as a progressive disclosure UX pillar to create focus on the task at hand. Carefully chosen micro-interactions, such as progress indicators, opacity changes and page transitions were used to subtly guide the user through the various parts of a complex journey while larger animations were used to celebrate the big wins during the various stages of the tax filing process.
