This project highlights my role as Lead Product Designer for the Formview redesign, later rebranded as Taxport. It covers the design process from research and ideation to final outcomes, emphasizing how I improved user experience, collaborated with stakeholders, and delivered a modernized tax software solution. This project showcases my ability to solve complex UX problems, design intuitive interfaces, and drive cross-functional collaboration.
Project Overview
Project Name
Formview Redesign (renamed Taxport)
Role
Lead Product Designer (owned research, design, and testing)
Objective
Formview, a tax software product by Sovos, was outdated in both technology and UX/UI, negatively impacting user experience and leading to some customer churn. Additionally, its poor design prevented marketing and sales from showcasing the product. The goal was to rebuild and redesign Formview into Taxport, making it intuitive and efficient, with an updated UI that marketing and sales would be proud to show.
Target Audience
Primarily customer service agents, with some tax professionals. Also casinos and gaming houses.
Research and Insights
Market Analysis
Sovos’ software is the most comprehensive in the industry but was falling behind due to poor UX.
User Research
First, we needed to understand who the top users were. I found the top clients using Formview, based on how many users in that company had access to the product. I then reached out to our contact at those companies to understand the main users in their company.
I found that for most companies, customer service agents were by far the main users, with various tax professionals also coming up. I reached out to those top companies to request interviews. I conducted interviews with 5 customer service agents and 3 tax professionals to understand key use cases and pain points.
Key Insights
Main Tasks:
• Downloading and sending tax form PDFs to customers.
• Requesting edits of tax form data.
• Editing or requesting edits to recipient data.
Friction Points:
• Tedious to download the customer's tax form PDF.
• Challenges in locating recipient tax forms across different years.
• Inefficient processes for requesting or making edits to data.
A secondary use case for Formview are casinos and gaming houses, who use it to validate someones identity.
Formview before
Above is the landing page for the product. On this page, customer service agents choose to search for tax forms by a customers TIN (Tax Identification Number, such as a Social Security number), account number, or name.
Here we see the dropdown to select a tax year to search in.
This is an example of search results. This is showing a single recipient with 29 tax forms being returned. For a customer service agent to download a PDF of one of these forms, they first need to click "View" on the desired form. "View" opens a browser default PDF view of the tax form where they will need to confirm it's the correct form, and download it. If they're not sure which tax form they need, they'll need to open each form individually.
If a user chooses to "Edit" on the search results page, they're taken to the Recipient details page above. Depending on user permissions the data can be edited in addition to viewed. Most customer service agents do not have edit ability. If "Verify Recip" is clicked, an identity check is run on this recipient and results are shown on the TIN Matching page, below.
TIN Matching is predominantly used by casinos and gaming houses to validate someones identity.
Design Process
Ideation
Ideation started by considering what the goals for the project would be:
• Simplify customer service agents main tasks to reduce time to completion
• Update UI to align with Sovos design system
• Keep feature parity
Much of ideation involved collaborative workshops that could include the product manager, tech lead, front end developers, product leadership, marketing, and sales. We'd brainstorm solutions with consideration for the technological feasibility, and overall objectives for the project.
Solutions to Friction Points:
• Create PDF Button: Made it easy to find and the primary action button with user-friendly terminology.
• Tax Year Navigation: Added prominent year references, and a color coding and labeling system.
• Requesting Edits: Introduced a 'copy link' feature for secure and accurate communication.
Wireframing
Developed low-fidelity wireframes to map user flows. (Note: No images available) Iterated on these designs until all stakeholders were aligned.
Design System
Leveraged and updated the existing design system, collaborating with designers across business units and countries for scalability. Specifically, form input fields were completely overhauled.
Prototyping
Built interactive prototypes for testing and iteration.
High-Fidelity Mockups
A collection of final high-fidelity mockups used by development, marketing, and sales.
The landing page now clearly highlights which tax year the system is in. We also simplified and smartened the search so that users don't have to select what they're searching by.
When a recipient is not found, options for other tax years come up. If clicked, these buttons will rerun the search in that tax year.
The tax year selection drop down is now easier to read, using labels and color to guide users. We bucket tax years into three categories: current tax year (turquoise), not current tax year (purple), test environment (grey).
Customer service agents can now create the tax form PDF right from the search results page. And because more information is now shown about the recipient and form(s), customer service agents don't need to open and review a PDF of the actual tax form for confirmation.
The copy link button is found as the copy icon at the top right of the recipient result box.
Details about tax forms collapses when there are more than 3 forms for a recipient. Each tax form listed can be expanded to show the full details. This allows large amounts of forms to be scannable, while maintaining easy access to more information.
Note that the most common results case is 1 recipient and 1 tax form for them. Less common is multiple forms for a single returned recipient. Rarely, multiple recipients will be returned if a search is done by a common name.
Here we see a read only tax form details page, as a customer service agent would see it. Before, tax form details pages were hidden from customer service agents, making it harder for them to confirm tax forms.
Below is an editable version, used by tax professionals.
Below is the revamped recipient details page. "Verify Recip" is now the Real-time check section, which allows an identity to be validated on the page.
For casinos and gaming houses, the Real-time Check page is heavily used. It's kept all the original functionality, just cleaned up a bit.
The page showing results below now includes explanation information.
Collaboration
Cross-Functional Work
Collaborated with product managers, tech leads, developers, product leadership, marketing, and sales.
Facilitated ideation and feedback workshops with stakeholders.
Feedback Loops
Conducted usability tests with customer service agents, weekly reviews with product managers and tech leads, and bi-weekly reviews with leadership, marketing, and sales.
Project Impact
Successfully simplified critical workflows, enhanced UI for brand alignment, and received positive reactions from marketing and sales.
Outcomes
• Faster and easier tax form retrieval and download (reduced steps by 2).
• Improved record updating with a secure link-sharing feature and clearer input states.
• Clear identification of tax year in use, validated during final user testing.