The client's vision for this brand was to be friendly and unassuming, easing any intimidation the average person might have towards tax accounting - an understandable concern. The user experience included both the consumer facing website and tax calculators, and a content management system for blog posts, providing value for free with the long term goal of driving business to the parent accounting firm.

The client wanted the logo to be reminiscent of the parent company's logo, but more "tech-feeling." We opted to make the color palette a similar hue of purple, but more vibrant to be eye-catching on screen. Reducing the color palette to compensate for the additional vibrancy, we employed different transparencies of the same purple, instead of overlapping solid colors like in the original logo.

We selected a similar color scheme to the parent firm's branding, but  slightly more vibrant to match the modern, online feel of user friendly tax calculators.

This sans-serif typeface called Fieldwork, has a very friendly feel while still looking professional. This typeface is web friendly and inviting to the eye, which we thought was important when dealing with a subject matter like taxes, which can be daunting to us non-accountant humans!

The biggest challenge in this project was creating a dense interface - 17 different tax calculators to be exact - with a cohesive design language.

The client gave several examples of similar software to emulate. Due to time constraints, I had little to rely on for UX insights aside from good old fashioned sifting through reviews of competitors. My research confirmed what the client had insisted: simplicity would be key.

To achieve the ultimate goal of providing value to build trust and ethos in order to convert new customers in the long term, the client emphasized that it was also important to place any calls to action after the user had already received some benefit. This deliver before you ask sales strategy was our main UX strategy for building user trust.

For simplicity to aid in building user trust, we wanted to make the core functionality of this web app front and center. The user should be able to calculate their estimated income tax in just one click. This resulted in skipping over any complexity or sales pitch of a standard landing page, to placing a simple tagline and input box front and center on the home page. It needed to be simple & inviting.

I set out to create sketches that would illustrate the user journey and additionally create some basic layouts for the secondary pages.

Once all sketches had been compiled, I went to work on creating low-fidelity wireframes to demonstrate functionality. For the client's convenience, I presented these in short video walk-throughs to explain my design reasoning.

The decision to delay the appearance of a call to action until after a user had gone through the process of  using a tax calculator is intended to build that ethos. This would help to prevent the site from feeling spam-y, proving to a user that the service was entirely free. Then, if a user  wanted to go in more depth, they could receive a free consultation with a tax professional, further signaling non-commitment to increase the likelihood of one requesting info.

The next strategy for driving conversions would be to offer the user an option to export their tax calculations. After they used a calculator, they would be shown a similar prompt to export their calculations. The email input would be given as a primary option to add the user into the customer pipeline, but they would have the alternative of exporting results using other options if their privacy was a concern. Once the user's email was in our ecosystem, we could market to them via a newsletter, promotion, etc.

Time and budget constraints vary from project to project, especially in the world of startups. However, that doesn't mean an interface has to look dull or templated! In many cases, constraints can be an opportunity to innovate.

Since this project didn't include custom illustrations,  I searched for some free-to-use illustrations that could still bring life to the UI. After providing a selection of options that would fit within the design language, together with the client, we  chose a set of illustrations that worked well and didn't look too stock.

This was perhaps my favorite part of the entire interface. At some point whilst designing, I used  Emojis as placeholders. Then, in a very serendipitous manner, they kind of just worked. For a project with no custom illustration in the budget, yet a need to visually represent concepts from maternity pay to construction worker tax rebates, emojis presented the perfect solution. They added quirkiness and a modern feel, could be universally recognizable, and as the 🍒 on top, they're all open source!

This project was completed over the course of 6 weeks with myself as the designer plus one developer. We worked hard to create something unique with respect for shareholder priorities and experience of the user.

You may view the live project at www.taxcalculators.co.