Income Tax Mobile App

Stress-free tax solutions for individual taxpayers

Overview

Many people dread taxes. They find them complicated, time-consuming, and boring. As a result, they try to avoid dealing with them altogether or delegate them to accountants. This is especially true in India, where the intricate tax code can make filing taxes feel like an overwhelming chore.

Quicko is a reg-tech platform that aims to change that perception by providing intuitive and efficient tax solutions. It offers taxpayers an innovative solution to make the process easier by automating calculations, auto-filling & importing data, and providing helpful explanations at all steps. Quicko prioritizes user experience by emphasizing accessibility and user-friendly features, motivating them to stay tax-compliant.

My role -

Product Designer

  • ‍Collaborated with product team to gather requirements
  • Revamped & designed features based on the new product strategy
  • ‍Delivered the hand-offs to the developers
I was responsible for end-to-end experience including ideating early product concepts, defining user flows, wireframing & prototyping high fidelity designs, developing and maintaining design system, and writing UX copy along with product team

Team

1 Product Manager, 4 Engineers, 2 Functional Analysts, 1 Sr. Product Designer

Timeline

2023-2024, 5 months

Product Scope

Quicko aims to provide users with entire tax suite. To achieve this, core of income tax products is divided into four modules. This approach empowers users to save on taxes, plan effectively, streamline tax payments, file tax returns easily and even track their investments.

Save

Helps users visualize and plan taxes, by providing potential insights

Pay

Offers users a quicker, and safer way to pay tax dues

File

Helps users in tax filing journey with autofill, review & e-file

Track

Helps users visualize their investments and P&L with help of broker integrations

Why mobile application

Quicko provides web application services for tax filing purposes. Recognizing that users today prioritize mobile interaction, Quicko enables them with a convenient mobile app for anytime, anywhere access. The app focuses on simplified workflows, and offers a reimagined experience that helps retain users. It significantly simplifies the tax filing process, making it less time-consuming, more accessible, and thus more efficient.

Who are the users

This tax filing solution simplifies the complex process for all Indian taxpayers seeking an easier way to file. It caters to a wide range of individuals, from salaried employees to self-employed professionals and even small business owners.
Salaried Employees
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The Problem

The initially launched tax mobile app has served its initial purpose well. However, user feedback and time had revealed significant design and engineering issues that needs to be addressed. Additionally, recent updates to income tax regulations needed to be incorporated in the product. The major issues to resolve were
  • User experience - There were various user experience problems such as navigation challenges, complex workflows, validations issues at all stages of filing journey, discoverability issues, and the absence of a cohesive design language
  • Scalability - We wanted to add more features to the product, which would provide users with more functionalities and enable us to explore potential revenue models. To address this, the business model was also changed, and thus redesign was needed to accommodate this expansion and growth
  • Delivery channels - The mobile app had to served two goals: a standalone web application and an SDK for fintech partners which would bring the majority of user base. The possibilities were to provide individual modules also as SDK, but the current design was inefficient and thus needed a redesign

Process

For the new version of the app, we adopted the Reanalyze, Redesign, Recode approach to ensure we didn't miss any gaps. This allowed us to incorporate a fresh vision while meeting all requirements.

Being a fast paced start-up, we did not have long duration for research and user interviews as  the product was meant to reach the users as soon as possible. Hence, we followed agile methodology where each step of the process was very quick and at its best pace contributing to the development of the product.

Redesign Goals

The main goal of this product is to make tax filing process simpler for everyone. To achieve this goal, we've established a set of key principles to guide the development of an efficient and user-friendly product.

Task-oriented Workflows

  • Mobile users prioritize completing tasks quickly, thus need minimum number of steps and time
  • Interfaces should be intuitive, allowing users to navigate and complete tasks seamlessly

Building Trust

  • Users might be unaware about details of Income tax act, so clear explanations would help empowering users and building trust
  • Tax calculations can be simplified with proper data visualization and clear storytelling of numbers

Lightweight Experience

  • User might feel overwhelmed by lengthy data entry, thus long user journeys needs to broken in small steps
  • Unnecessary clutter can be reduced, minimizing distractions

File module

Filing taxes in India is a step-by-step journey. It involves gathering income from different sources, applying deductions and tax credits, carefully checking everything for accuracy, and finally submitting your completed return electronically to the Income Tax Department. Thus, it's important to understand the filing journey to file Income Tax Return(ITR).

Design System

The phase that excites me the most is the design system. This mobile app was designed to function as a Software Development Kit (SDK). For example, a user might access it through a "File taxes" CTA within a broker's app. Therefore, we decided not to give the app a strong visual identity. Instead, we opted for a very basic UI that wouldn't overwhelm users or clash with the established identities of the host apps.

To further ensure seamless integration with the host app, we decided to offer a theme-based solution that allows the host app to customize the colors. This is one of the main USP of this product. Now to achieve this, we used Google's Material Theme Builder, which generates color palettes in both light and dark modes based on a single seed (source) color. The Material Theme Builder and its principles facilitated defining core concepts for our color system and made implementation easier for developers on Flutter.
Some examples of themed solutions
We implemented a system with different states for error and warning messages. These states are visually communicated through dedicated strips and widgets wherever required. To ensure consistency and clarity, I defined a color palette specifically for these elements.
We maintained the design system based on component system. Reusability of components helps in maintaining consistency across the application.

Conclusion

Learnings

  • Strategic Approach: Working in sprints was an engaging experience. We planned and scoped both short-term daily goals and longer-term objectives, strategically curating important tasks. Additionally, learning to work on parallel design stages proved crucial for achieving MVP goals.
  • Collaborative Approach: Working alongside managers, designers, developers, and functional analysts provided a valuable learning experience, contributing significantly to team's success
  • Reviews & Discussions: We iteratively designed, adapting to reviews and quickly checking with engineers on feasibility and resources. This helped me getting clarity & deliver faster
  • Understanding Limits: Designing the app introduced me to the Flutter framework. This experience highlighted the importance of understanding a technology's capabilities, so that we don't restrict ourselves
  • Design System: I learned about consistent navigation patterns & interaction patterns with its impact on overall experience of the product. Also learnt to define a scalable and a cohesive design system

Next steps

This project is live for the tax return filing season. Due to strict timeline we were not able to explore many features in all modules, so enhancing the product is the next step.

Formal user testing wasn't possible during the current development phase. However, it is planned to test the product with our tax experts and observe user sessions after launch to validate design decisions, identify any usability gaps, and gather valuable feedback for future enhancements.
Coming from a non-technical background with no prior knowledge of finance or taxes, I faced a steep learning curve. Understanding these complexities while designing intuitive interfaces for complex processes was really a rewarding challenge.

This internship also marked my first experience working within a startup team with diverse stakeholders. Getting all of their inputs, merging them together into wireframes, understanding developer’s constraints, getting feedback and then delivering the final product was really an eye opening journey. Witnessing the rapid pace of discussion, development, and implementation as tax season approached was truly exciting. This journey provided me with not only the opportunity to improve my skills, but also to grow as a person, teammate, and designer.
Thanks for reading!

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I'm open to new projects and opportunities so let's chat!

nomitaj21@gmail.com
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