The Human Problem
Over the course of it's life, FSS had become bloated with additional feature requests.
Navigating the product now was a confusing mess of complicated shortcuts and clicks, meaningless to a new user without extensive tutorials.
The Business Problem
With the feature requests coming in thick and fast, the codebase had piled up and become more than it was worth to handle.
DataSnipper wanted to include some of the latest technology but were afraid of piling on more debt.
Think-Tank-Tuesdays
An open workshop for all co-workers to join an express idea, opinions and input surrounding a theme.
"What does FSS look like in 5 years?"
Client Interviews
FSS has a very loyal fanbase which makes interviews a breeze.
Over the course of two months, we discussed FSS with users from all levels. Including some companies who had cancelled their licenses.
Internal Strategy
A big bet would be placed on decoupling FSS and a rebuild. We needed to have management fully onboard and knowing they were being heard for the future of FSS. We took time to sit down with two of the founders to understand their initial pitch of FSS.
How might we design FSS for sustainability, modern workflows and new users?
Comment:
"I have no idea what I've managed to do here?"
Open Question
Why are we moving through the product linearly?
Idea
How about we ditch the entire top bar?
Navigating Growth
The current tab system had to go. From observation we knew that users don't move linearly through their financial reviews. It can be a tennis match of back and forth. We needed to encompass this behaviour.
Sidebar
DataSnipper's always followed closely to Micorsoft's Fluent Design System.
When redesigning FSS, it was an obvious choice to move the navigation into the sidebar in a similar design style to Fluent 2.
Export Overview
In a time orientated environment such as audit, knowledge of progress is a need. This is why we introduced Project Insights, a way to view all tickmarks checked and unchecked across versions of a FS.
Managers can also remotely access these insights from their portal on web.
Inviting Collaboration
It's not just a one-person job reviewing a financial statement. From the junior to the leads of the company, everyone needs to know what's going on and where. We needed to bring in additional collaboration capabilities within FSS.
Clearer Comments
Markup
Final Checks
The largest pitfalls of a financial statement check is the Final Checklist.
A series of complicated standards to abide by when devising a FS. With the capabilities of AI, we could now find natural language answers to each question listed. Alongside sources and actions for the user to take, users are shifting from searching to reviewing.
DataSnipper's AI Identity
Having led the design for the Innovation team developing DataSnipper's AI offerings, I was tasked with incorporating the same design language to FSS.
The way a user interacts with each item from AI needed to be familiar across all DataSnipper products. Though lacking the AI Pink introduced in DocuMine which indicates AI-Generated content, FSS features still include the Answer Cards, Source Snips, Actions and Editing.
Testing
Internal Observation Testing
Working from an extensive prototype in Figma, we were able to replicate main features of the complex product.
We put this into the hands of ex-auditors internally to observation test and round table.
Remote Usability
Using Maze, we developed testing for our clients. A series of 6 tasks performed in old FSS, then new.
Timed in both clicks and time-to-complete. Success would be if they could perform the same actions in new FSS faster or less clicks.
100%
Of users tested preferred the new design.
22/25
Of participants performed the tasks within a quicker time/less clicks than previously.
To be fixed…
"Where has Export gone? What is this percentage calculating?"
Notes:
Groundwork
When I joined, there was a lot of pushback from the team towards the effort PM and I would be asking of them. They had been stagnant for too long.
Showing them a vision and the mission gave them that energy again.
Handover
When Samay left the project, I spent weeks trawling through files to understand the work and in some cases reproduce what had been done.
Eventually I was up to speed but this hindered timelines and juggling two teams.