Storyboardline & Sketches
SOLUTIONS
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Feature A: Accuracy in Users first search result of booking the tickets.
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Feature B:Saving frequent traveler information, to book tickets to same destination,same time, same flights, which will save the time and efforts of browsing in the busy schedule of Business.
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Feature C:Verbal Booking while commuting and multitasking.
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Feature D:Adding Widgets to the homepage to frequently asked basic information about the booking of tickets.
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Feature E:Comparative Deal Analysis Widgets.
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Feature F:Website/App Focused on more on the go Behaviors.
Role: UX designer​
Tools used: Sketch, Invision
Project: Proposal for a platform to manage and automate company expenses.
How it helps the users?
My design journey of a web app that helps employees to submit their expenses to their company.
How it works?
Spendo is real-time expense management and corporate card solution that helps mid-size companies manage employee expenses.
How it solves the problem?
It eliminates the need for expense reporting for employees.
All expenses are checked by an AI-powered audit engine.
Accounts Payable
Alerts/Notifications
Budgeting & Forecasting
Business Card
Business Idea
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Business idea- Changing the company card
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A platform to manage and automate company expenses
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The idea of spendo is a business prepaid card that lets business owners and managers control where and how much employees spend, all on a reloadable prepaid card.
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Also giving them a virtual credit card which would allow them to pay things online
User Research
User interview and identifying the users
I then decided to spot some startups online and connect with people on Linkedin to schedule some interviews hoping I could observe their process, behaviors, and pain points.
Persona Crafting?
A number of interviews :
1 Director from a media startup company (face to face meetings);
1 employee with diverse positions and backgrounds (phone call);
1 Sales manager of an expensive software company (phone call).
Fortunately for this project, I managed to gather even more precious data having after getting some replies on Linkedin and employees around me who accepted to answer my questions. This was a good way notably for me to have more insights on managers' habits, goals, or frustrations with expenses.
Persona
User Scenarios
User Stories: created by project/product managers to define the requirements prior to a sprint
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Nathalie Sapena, one of the journalists. Nathalie explains that each month, she dedicates a whole day of her work hours to submit all her expenses to her manager via a system. I could observe Nathalie completing the task of submitting an expense report to her manager via the software
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In the end, this user story gave me precious data that helped me empathize with my users and get to know a bit more the process of submitting a reimbursement request to a manager.
Synthesizing the Findings
Problem identified
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In any company, before we start using the certain identified platform we had a lot of paper receipts, so what happened rather than giving a corporate card we used the personal card collect the receipt and bring that receipt to the accounting department for reimbursement “So paper receipts is a big problem”
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“No real-time monitoring about the accuracy at the bank statement”
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Lack of Analytics
Pain-Points and Opportunities
After conducting these interviews, here are the frustrations and difficulties I noted for the employees
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They feel like they have more important things to do
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Expense intern policies should be made clearer for the employees
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People keep their paper receipts that sometimes get damaged
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Sometimes receipts are written in another language
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Employees are annoyed by having to transcribe what is on the receipt
Research -Problem statement
Defining a problem statement
At this stage of my research, I could then prioritize and define the problems my web/mobile application would try to solve and how I would approach it.
“Companies need to have a platform to manage and automate the expenses of employees and avoid the process of approval and reimbursement which would help the employees to use the time effectively and focus on the main tasks”
Solution
A superior alternative is: Business expense cards
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Business expense cards (BECs) are prepaid, debit, or occasionally credit cards for business expenses that give companies new levels of control over spending.
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Instead of sharing them, each employee has their own, and every payment is linked to that individual and the appropriate team budget.
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The overall idea is to give team members access to the funds they need, while also keeping finance teams and management in complete control.
“In today’s app-driven market, I wanted to design the good mobile programs that can help all easily and quickly track expenses and receipts with your smartphone.In which the apps are also an expedient way to get timely expense reports from your employees.App enables you to keep track of business expenses, mileage and billable time”
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Unique limits on each card that can be set and updated by managers and finance teams. This can be set (and changed anytime) by whoever controls the platform - managers, a finance leader, or the CEO.
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Links to a central tool or platform, so top-ups can be made quickly and all data can be viewed from anyway.
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An easy method to store receipts - usually by taking a photo through a mobile app.
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The most important difference is simply that, whereas the company card gets shared around, lost, and is easily mismanaged, expense cards each have one owner, and can be customized to suit your needs.
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Clear limits on expenses: Every employee is part of a designated team with its own budget, manager, and set amounts of pre-approved spending. You could choose to require approval for all spending, or just when an employee wants to exceed a set limit. They’re not connected to the company bank account. Instead, you load money onto a central platform that all your cards draw from.
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Receipts are stored easily:The best time to save a receipt is the second that the payment is made. Good prepaid cards come with a smartphone app that lets your team members take a photo of their receipt and save it next to the payment they just made. So expense reconciliation is basically done for you.
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By clicking on a fast scan he/she can submit an expense using the OCR technology that will automatically fill the expense form for him/her after having uploaded an image of the receipt. Here the user login on the interface that has it has to be safe both for the user and the company.
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On the dashboard, he can by the look the last expenses he/she submitted, and grab some information on his spending (trends, and categories).
Key Features
Competitive Analysis
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After picking three potential competitors — Expensify, Zoho, and Abbyy Business card— of my future product, I could better identify the opportunities of the current market.
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The question I was asking myself was: what features do the potential competitors have that my users will expect?
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This was also a way for me to improve an already existing product rather than reinventing the wheel.
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Using the Moscow method I could decide and prioritize the features I was going to use on the web app.
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From this analysis, I saw that the common features were based on giving the user more information and making this very visual: graphics visualization, expenses categories, monthly budget, timeline control, income control, and automatic or manual expenses registration.
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Regarding expenses registration, a feature present in all apps, I realized that some of the apps, that use manual action to add your expenses, have successful results since they are generic enough to not depend on the bank account, but at the same time apps can automatically solve this problem for the user.
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In the end, analyzing the results of my research, I understand most apps can help users to control their expenses, but I couldn’t find an app that is really focused on features to help users achieve their life goals like saving the expenses instantly by tracking through the business card and E-bill.
Affinity Mapping
Then we collaberatively started with analyzing and synthesizing user research finding by patterns and themes.
Card Sorting
We used Optimal card sorting method for online workshop to understand the data visualization
SITE MAP DIAGRAM
Site map helped us to identify the hierarchical diagram of the application see how pages are prioritized, linked and labeled.
EXPENSE APPROVAL FLOW
Information Architecture
Wireframes
Low Fidielity Wireframes
Mid Fidielity Wireframes
Style Guide
Creating a visual identity to my product
Spendo had to feel like an easy, simple and delightful app, as shown in the interviews. I had to keep in mind it had to do with money and should also feel like a reliable and safe place for the users. I first used the emotions of colors as a start to decide on my color palette and make sure my interface would impact my user in the right way, and then could create my style tile :
High Fidielity Wireframes- Mobile App
High Fidielity Wireframes- Web App
Prototypes
Learnings
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Spendo offers a simple solution to employees who have to submit expenses to their company with unclear interfaces and who wish to spend less time on this task.
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The beginning of my research taught me that approaching interviewees is not always easy but, perseverance is key to get insights that are primordial to make any design decisions.
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As any designer with a deadline, I also had to prioritize the work I wanted to get done for this project: I wish later on to go deeper in my research to get to know more of the managers’ frustrations and improve my interface from their perspective.
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Creating a visual design for Spendo was a journey as it was challenging to make it connect with the users’ needs and making sure it fits as a useful, smart, and beautiful product.