Opening a new business is always challenging, and one of the main factors is keeping up with your finances and with the government. We have the most used app for small business in Brazil, and there we used to provide a troubling experience for them to pay their taxes, causing a lot of confusion and friction.

As a product designer, I was part of a project with the goal of simplifying the payment of taxes for small business by redesigning the tax area of MEI Fácil by Neon, an app with more than 1 million active users who pay their taxes every month.

To comply with my non-disclosure agreement, I have omitted confidential information in this case study. I did a free translation of the texts on the screens from Portuguese to English.

The challenge

Our customer service area has received several complaints about the delay in displaying updated payment status and about duplicate payments. The reason for the complaint is that the app showed that a tax had not yet been paid when in reality it had already been. The tax area was the product with the highest number of complaints in customer service.

Also, the UI had low contrast colors hindering accessibility, components being used for different purposes than commonly used, and information architecture issues.

Discovery

Certainties, suppositions and doubts

We used a framework called CSD Matrix to define the scope of the challenge, considering:

1. What is already known (certainties)
2. Hypothesis raised (suppositions)
3. What is still unknown and needs to be investigated (doubts)

We gathered the squad, stakeholders and customer service to fill the 3 columns on the board and vote on the most relevant cards to guide the next steps of the discovery.

With the matrix ready, I put everything that was written on post-its and analyzed what would be the best way to discover or validate each one of them, separating between: Qualitative Research, Quantitative Research, Analytics, Usability Testing and others.

Desk research

I’ve found out by web searching and talking to our accountants that paying tax regularly has many benefits to the entrepreneur such as paid retirement, maternity salary and so on. But, there are also downsides to not paying the tax, such as interest for past due taxes, a government debt and can even lead to the cancellation of their registration.

Data Analytics

With the help of our Data Analyst, we’ve discovered that:

1. For months the number of active clients of our app who accessed the tax area were decreasing.
   Hypothesis: They were tracking the payment status just by looking at our main screen, not the tax screen.
2. In 2020 the option to pay the tax digitally has surpassed the options to pay it in person.
   Hypothesis: With the pandemic in 2020, users who were used to paying their tax in person started to pay it online in digital banking apps.
3. Half of our active users had at least one past due tax in previous years.
   Hypothesis: Our current tax list screen was failing to show past due taxes in previous years.
4. Less than 1% of our users paid early their taxes.
   Hypothesis: Our users pay their taxes monthly, they don’t have the habit of paying in advance.
5. Almost half of our users close their businesses with tax arrears.
   Hypothesis: Besides failing to report past due taxes in previous years, we also fail to communicate the downsides of not paying it.

User interviews

Research objective

To understand whether our users know the benefits and losses related to paying taxes, how they pay it today, how they check their payment status, and overall feeling about our communications.

Together with the UX Researcher we created the script and decided the user profiles to be recruited for the interviews:

Users over and under a year managing their business to understand the different levels of knowledge and behavior regarding the tax payment and its benefits.

Research insights

• They used to pay the tax at the bank branch and now they learned to pay it online in the bank’s app.
• They consider the time it takes to show up-to-date payment status too long and manual.
• Users who pay their taxes before they’re due said they are anxious for the app to show their up-to-date status because they’re afraid of being in debt.
• They said they would lose confidence in our brand if we keep showing not up-do-date status, which would lead them to uninstall the app.
• They fear the government will close their business if they don’t pay the tax.
• There was little knowledge about the benefits of paying the tax, but they knew they could have paid retirement if they did. However, they didn’t know how the process to obtain paid retirement works.
• Some users stated that they didn’t know that there was a tax to be payed when opening their business, which made them indebted over time.

Competitive Analysis

I looked at the biggest competitors that offer tax payment and discovered that so far, we had almost no advantage when compared to them and all services where very similar, even in their problems. They didn’t provide real-time updates of payments or a clear vision of past due taxes.

Problem

After the discovery we defined the macro-problems that we have in our current flow and prioritized them in order of relevance, according to our research and data:

Define

Design critiques & Co-creation

At MEI Fácil by Neon we have a Design System based on Material Design and I used it to create our new tax area.

I created several versions of the screens and did 3 rounds of design critiques with other designers to get improvement insights and vote on which version was the best. Each round generated a lot of comments and together we co-created ideas.

After the third review, I iterated the screens and showed them to the development team to understand the technical feasibility and gather more feedback. Finally, together with the PM, we decided which would be the final interface to be taken to usability testing.

Usability testing

Together with our UX Researcher I defined the task success, the purpose of usability testing and finally I recruited active clients to participate in the test.

Our goals:

1. Bring visibility to past due taxes
2. Gather insight into updating payment statuses

Main insights:

• They shared that the tax list is now more organized
• Everyone immediately noticed the past due taxes at the top of the list, which showed us that we were able to achieve our goal of giving them more visibility
• Only half of users used the update button, again bringing up the issue that we can’t rely on user action alone to update payment status
• The button panel displaying the number of past due and paid taxes was noticed by all users
• Most tapped the past due taxes button
• The main screen and tax detail screens were browsed by users without any problems

The paid and past due taxes screens were also tested, but they weren’t released in our MVP, so they weren’t included here.

Final screens

With the usability tests finished, I did the last iterations and decided the final screens to go to MVP.

Main screen

Rather than displaying only the last two taxes and their payment status, we’ve chosen to summarize the payment status of all taxes in one sentence, which can be “You’re up to date with your taxes” or “You have past due taxes”, to quickly inform the user.

We also display the total amount of debt they owe or just the next tax to be paid if they don’t have debt.

We’ve added the date and time of the last update to prevent out-of-date statuses from being consulted.

The “View all” button takes the user to the list of taxes, thus preventing him from seeing the statuses through the main screen, as was the case before.

Tax list

As with the main screen, here we also include the payment situation summarized in one sentence and the date and time of the last update.

We’ve identified the need for greater transparency about the update process in interviews, so we’re now updating payments automatically. We kept the update button on the screen in case something unforeseen happens in the automatic update.

To help users stay out of debt, we’ve included a button that reports total debts and takes you to an area with a history of overdue taxes.

We’ve also included a button that reports total taxes paid to help them understand when they can claim benefits that the tax offers, as found in desk research. By prioritization, these two history areas have not been included in MVP and have not yet been released.

The ordering of the list has also changed: overdue taxes are presented first for greater visibility, helping the user to quickly identify them. These are followed by ready-to-pay taxes and finally paid taxes at the bottom of the list.

If the user pays the tax in advance, he may have problems applying for a time off benefit, such as maternity leave and others. That’s why we chose to leave only the tax due next month in yellow, making it a priority. Taxes for the next few months are grayed out but not disabled, so they can still access and pay them if they prefer.

We also added the FAQ in the header, which didn’t exist in the previous version.

Tax details

I’ve optimized the information architecture so that the main focus is the amount to be paid, being the first thing to be seen.

The tax payment status is just below the amount so the payer is quickly informed, and is followed by the due date. The time it takes the government to make the payment was one of the main reasons for complaints in the research, so we added it to the list to give more visibility to this information.

Finally, the tax payment code and the button to pay it with our bank are presented, both now adapted to our design system. The share button, as we found in the data analysis, was decreasing in clicks, so I moved it to the header to make more room for more important information and frequently used actions.

The FAQ button has also been included in the header.

Final flow

After validating the prototype with users, I designed the entire screen flow with business rules, edge cases and alternative flows. The flow became bigger and better mapped than before.

I found error messages that were being communicated as generic errors such as “Oops, something went wrong” rather than providing honest feedback to the user about what happened and what they can do about it. Also, the app was not showing some tax status, and both errors and status are now showing correctly.

Recalling the most frequent problems that users had with the product, one of them was the double payment by mistake. To do this, we’ve included a rule that checks whether the user has clicked on the payment buttons before, and if so, we let them know that they’ve already clicked before.

Then, together with the whole team, we evaluated the flow and selected the essential parts to deploy to production in MVP. Therefore, in this first version, the total debits and total paid screens were not included as they are new screens with a high level of complexity, but we included their buttons to show the amount of taxes in each one, keeping our purpose of giving visibility to our users.

Together with the Customer Experience team, we created the FAQs that didn’t exist before.

Results

As of this writing, the redesign of the tax area has had a positive impact on our users and business. We noticed an increase in the number of active users in the tax area, a number that was gradually falling over the previous year.

Automatic payment update meant that users were always up to date when accessing the list, thus avoiding breaking their trust.

We also noticed an increase in demand for our Accounting service that offers the installment of past due taxes with the government, concluding that with the new interface that shows the total overdue taxes we were able to bring visibility to these old debts that were forgotten and were not seen.

—

Eu migrei recentemente pra área de UX e a partir da convivência no meio da tecnologia vi que existe um gap enorme de gênero nessa área, então nada mais justo do que compartilhar um pouco do que eu aprendi e usei pra migrar com outras mulheres, pra que a gente cresça junto!

Primeiro de tudo, eu acredito muito que cursos podem te ajudar a aprender com profissionais que já estão na área e principalmente a começar a colocar em prática tudo que você aprender. Eu fiz o curso de UX Design da Digital House (https://br.digitalhouse.com/curso/experiencia-do-usuario-ux/) que tem como coordenadora a Amyris Fernandez, uma profissional foda que já tem muitos e muitos anos na área, e tem um canal que fala sobre UX! (https://tinyurl.com/canal-amyris)

O preço do curso da Digital é bem salgado, mas tem diversas escolas que atualmente oferecem cursos introdutórios presenciais de UX, como a Mergo, Mastertech, TERA e Ironhack. Vale dizer que na Digital house eu estudei com 50% de bolsa, e que na Ironhack eles tem alguns programas de bolsa também. Dá uma olhadinha em todos e se escolher algum, tenta sempre ver se rola uma bolsa de estudos!

E online também tem diversos cursos, mas eu particularmente recomendo d+ os do Leandro Rezende (https://www.udemy.com/user/leandrorezende/), que tem um preço muito mais acessível que os presenciais e você consegue base principalmente pra entender as ferramentas do mercado, como Sketch, Adobe XD, etc. Me falam muito bem também sobre os cursos da Alura (https://www.alura.com.br/cursos-online-design-ux), onde você paga uma mensalidade e tem acesso ao conteúdo deles. Alguns amigos estudaram somente por lá e daí foram trabalhar na área!

Também recomendo alguns canais no youtube: UXLAB, UXNOW, UXCONF BR, DesignTeam, UX Unicórnio, Amyris Fernandez e NNgroup (esse é em inglês, mas é dos pais do UX!). Também temos conteúdo massa em podcasts, como: Aelacast, ExPatria, Iteraideia e Movimento UX.

Também tem iniciativas incríveis como a UX para minas pretas @uxminaspretas e a Ladies That UX @ladiesthatuxSPO que vale acompanhar sempre!

Outra dica legal pra quem tá migrando e pra todo mundo num geral, é ficar de olho nos eventos e palestras sobre UX que rolam. Direto algumas empresas como o Ifood, IBM, Quintoandar, Luizalabs, entre outras abrem as portas e divulgam eventos com os designers deles sobre assuntos maneiros. Recomendo ficar de olho nesses sites: Meetup (https://www.meetup.com/), Eventbrite (https://www.eventbrite.com.br/) e Sympla (https://www.sympla.com.br/). Geralmente os eventos costumam usar uma dessas plataformas pra divulgar, então vale a pena sempre dar 1 search se tá rolando alguma coisa legal! (e costuma esgotar MUITO rápido :O)

Pra conseguir a minha primeira vaga na área, além dos cursos, eu optei por investir no linkedin! Adicionei muita gente que já trampa com UX, minha timeline ficou cheia de novidades que essas pessoas compartilham diariamente e nossa, faz uma baita diferença! Tentava postar sempre algum conteúdo interessante, nisso eu movimentei meu perfil e alguns recrutadores e empresas começaram a falar comigo. Decidi arriscar e aí mudei 💖

Tenho alguns materiais, links e livros salvos que posso compartilhar contigo dependendo do que você tiver mais interesse em estudar! Só me dizer que eu vou fazer o possível pra ajudar <3

Meu linkedin:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/arielleferreira/