Team: Independent Project
Tools: Figjam, Dovetail, Teams, Excel, Competitive Analysis, User Interviews, Qualitative Analysis, Thematic Coding, Ticket Analysis
Duration: June - August 2023 (7-8 weeks).
Responsibilities: In this project, I conducted competitive analysis and interviews with product stakeholders/users to understand pain points in the problem space and tax rule use cases. Then I analyzed qualitative data to generate themes and insights which I reported to stakeholders like the design director and VP of product informing product strategy and roadmap for Sovo’s tax determination product (GTD)’s revamp/redesign.
Sovos is a tax compliance company that specializes in tax software and compliance solutions. They provide a range of software and services to help businesses and organizations meet their tax compliance and reporting needs. One of those is Global Tax Determination (GTD), a tax calculation engine that ensures every sale and purchase made includes the correct tax rate based on jurisdiction, product type, and scenario for large enterprises.
GTD has been in use for over 10 years, its user interface is not only outdated but also overly complicated. Sovos is currently redesigning and revamping the product to align with their branding and adhere to the Mosaic Design System.
The goal of this project is to develop a better understanding of who sets and edits GTD’s tax rules, the complexities in the process, and what customers want to see in these rates applied to.
The findings of this project will inform:
- A general overview of setting and updating standard and custom tax rules
- Understanding of GTD pain points regarding viewing/editing tax rules
- Design recommendations on what to include in the new GTD UI
This is a brief rundown of my research roadmap for this project.
1. Being Crafty with B2B Research
The products/projects that I worked on at Sovos were B2B, so I had to be creative with finding ways to
gather insight and user feedback. Interviewing customers/end users was not an option due to product nature and
time constraints, thus, finding internal users was the way to go.
I discovered that when interviewing internal users (such as the service team and QA team) they are often at a standstill when asked what could be improved about the product. This makes sense as these users use the interface regularly and are experts no matter how complex the system is. I realized that it was most helpful to start with asking how they use the product and ask them to demonstrate how they usually complete certain tasks on the interface to look for pain points.
2. Domain knowledge and getting context
One of the things that I learned during my time at Sovos was picking up on domain knowledge quickly
and getting enough context for my projects. I realized that I don’t need to know everything about
a product to get started, but rather, I need to figure out what is within the scope of my project and
ask questions to get enough context to unblock myself.