Product UX design, Desktop / 2021
Penta set out to be a 'swiss army knife' of everything banking-related for SMEs. As such, this project presented an opportunity to create an in-app invoicing solution that had great growth potential.
I was one of two designers and design sprint facilitator.
I was entrusted with research, prototyping, writing user tests, timeline management, data input, and evangelizing sprints.
Our existing banking solution was already integrating with Germany's leading accounting tools, but upon closer inspection, we discovered that those tools provided inadequate solutions for invoicing composition and management. Our initial research came up with the following data:
*(Possible steps counted: Receipt of the invoice, conversion to digital, OCR, filing, payment initiation, matching invoice to payment, manual export for accounting, bookkeeping) **(Possible interfaces counted: Digital or analog inboxes, physical or digital scanning tool, OCR tool, digital or analog filing tool, payment tool, accounting or tax tools)
Initial research A survey that targeted 3k users was sent out, yielding 101 responses. My teammates and I asked users about their current habits and interactions with invoicing, both incoming and outgoing. This survey taught me that there was a great deal of potential in dramatically improving their process of incoming invoices. I also learned that the vast majority of users make use of different tools to deal with incoming vs outgoing invoices, which opened up a window of opportunity to push for a partial MVP of only incoming invoices, that could be live and adopted by users much sooner than a holistic solution. My team and I decided this topic was perfect for a design sprint.
Sprint prep In the team, we had discussions on the benefits of design sprints in the past, but we had yet to attempt a proper design sprint. My PM and I decided we would make Invoices our first problem for a sprint. The two of us conducted research on approaches to 5-day sprints and adapted resources we found to the constraints of our organization and team. We then planned a schedule that made sense and invited the relevant team members.
I adapted our user personas after leading a workshop on the topic during the sprint
Strategy and mapping My team and I spent a couple of days strategizing online on the target audience, their needs, and our capabilities. Coming into the sprint, each team member had a partial idea of the requirements, constraints, competition, and business goals, but the sprint format refined those, and got everyone on board and thinking about the best possible outcome. When mapping out the process, the team and I learned we did not have all the answers to come up with a foolproof idea, but in the spirit of sprints - we decided to focus on a surface of a finished product and work our way backward from there.
The process as it was mapped live with the team