What was referred to as the "Classic Technology" by Tax Processors, ADP's mainframe housed 60+ years of tax expertise encoded within its controls.
Our discovery research revealed that tax associates held roughly 30-50% of expert jurisdictional tax knowledge in their HEADS or amongst manaul workarounds they had devised that were disconnected from the. mainframe.
Customers trusted ADP as the "tax compliance experts"due to this 60+ years of tax compliance expertise. However the competition was disrupting the market with streamlined, cloud-based solutions.
N8
Backgound
Led the research strategy and managed a team of researchers, designers, and a front-end developer in the end-to-end discovery -> launch of ADP's tax processing engine and the service design of the workflows it supported. The project was longitudinal, taking over 5 years, due to tech debt, limited resources, and specific challenges:
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Transitioning from a 60-year-old mainframe to AWS
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Undocumented, complex workflows and subject matter expertise stored in tax processors' heads
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Accommodating diverse tax processing roles and jurisdiction parameters
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Change management of 60-year-old departments, processes, and technology
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Siloed departments
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The Tasks
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Lead, coach, and mirror best practices for a cross-functional UX team
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Coach and guide the strategic research plan while project managing the research and design roadmap and deliverables
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Liaison and interpreter between business units, tax processors, product, UX, and engineering teams
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Clearing team hurdles:
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Technological: tech-debt, static URLs
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Off-site Facilitation: conducting facilitation and communication exercises to break through silos and find consensus to keep the project on track
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Energizing the teams and stakeholders
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Conveying success metrics and results to leadership
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Navigating a systems design problem (the complex software ecosystem that supported mainframe operations) when the project was only scoped to address the mainframe
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Actions
Ensured project and team success of a mixed-methods, longitudinal research strategy that included:
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Contextual Inquiry for in-depth understanding of user tasks, challenges, and workarounds.
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Multiple surveys at scale to validate findings from Contextual Inquiry.
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Leading Process Flow Generation working group to map existing workflows and identify improvement areas.
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Organizing and conducting Longitudinal Co-Creation Workshops for collaborative ideation and concept refinement.
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Team-led Usability Studies for continuous prototype testing and refinement.
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Diary Studies to track evolving user experiences.
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I ensured my team's success by:
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Clearing obstacles:
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Pendo data analytics were not supported by our mainframe technology
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I devised an innovative workaround using SPLUNK data.
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Ensuring UX research deliverables easily and clearly conveyed the most important and actionable insights
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Addressing challenges from a new CPO and Product Owner developing a different prototype by engaging key stakeholders:
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I conducted a FOG workshop to align on requirements for a revised MVP prototype.
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Creating HEART-based UX Success Metrics to gauge project and team success while increasing UX trust and agency amongst leadership
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The Results
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Developed a validated MVP prototype supporting primary tax processing workflows
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Achieved an intuitive, streamlined information architecture
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Outlined and drove a future-focused product and research roadmap
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Increased internal tax processor satisfaction with NPS scores rising significantly.
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Optimized workflows led to reduced errors, penalties, and interest for ADP
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Contributed to market share expansion and reduced customer churn rates
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UX Research Infographics my team and I designed were turned into posters and distributed throughout departments as a North Star artifact
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