Devin Johnson

Designer

ArboHQ

Case Study

Role

Project Lead, UX/UI Designer, UX Researcher


Toolkit

Figma, Adobe Illustrator, Miro

Background


ArboHQ is a financial platform designed to cater to the unique accounting needs of startups and SaaS (Software as a Service) companies. It provides a suite of services including accounting, tax compliance, R&D credit optimization, forecasting, and CFO services.


It offers automation for tasks such as revenue recognition and provides powerful insights through analytics dashboards. These features help businesses manage cash flow, track metrics like burn rate, and optimize their financial operations​

Research


Research Goals


We intend to redesign the internal Arbo platform to provide a more user-friendly and intuitive experience for CPAs, addressing navigation issues and enhancing satisfaction. This improvement will streamline financial processes, offering CPAs a more efficient tool comparable to industry competitors.


Methodologies
  • Competitive Analysis

  • Usability Study

Competitive Analysis

Click Image to Enlarge

Design Process


My Role


Improve the User Experience for the overall "Tax Projects" process for users. Specifically, the stakeholder has stressed that the process for updating a document should be priority as it has received negative feedback in the past.


Project Goals


Develop a new process that supports marketing objectives while addressing key user needs, ensuring the solution provides both business value and a positive, user-centered experience.

Information Architecture


I’ve built a sitemap considering primary, secondary and tertiary navigation starting at the landing page for my task.

Click Image to Enlarge

User Flow

Click Image to Enlarge

Wireframes


With the help of the sitemap along with user flows, I’ve started building my low-fidelity wireframes. New key screens I’ve designed are the following:

  • In Progress

  • Completed

  • Project Details

  • Documents



Style Guide


I’ve collected few references from the existing app in order to define a design system that could allow me to create consistent high-fidelity wireframes. Logo, typography, color palette, buttons and icons are the main elements I’ve outlined at this stage.

Click Image to Enlarge

Key Takeaways


Challenges Faced
  • To take on the project lead role and divide project goals amongst the team and organize our design sprint process

  • To make a huge effort in prioritization when creating an MVP

  • Incorporating business goals with conflicting user-feedback


Lessons Learned
  • The effort of keeping it simple can make a difference in the final outcome, starting form flowcharts up to the prototype experience.

  • The importance of a well-designed UI library/Style Guide, that is built up using components, variants and frames

  • Designing in a consistent way can truly help speed up the whole process