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Quicken Simplifi - Streamlining personal finance for freelancers

Improving Finance Management for Freelancers

8 min read

Overview

Imagine spending 30 minutes every weekend manually compiling different receipts, cross-referencing bank statements, and color-coding cells you'll inevitably mess up next month. It's objectively time consuming for independent businesses, but when asked if they'd consider switching to something convenient, most people say: "Not really." Across our research with microbusiness owners, we discovered people had built deep trust in their existing systems–no matter how inefficient. Quicken Simplifi was preparing to launch new features for project management and taxation support and my task was to understand how can we improve adoption of Quicken Simplifi among freelancers and microbusiness owners.

Role

UX Researcher

I led interviews and recruitment for research with microbusiness owners. I also facilitated analyzing research findings and synthesizing insights.

Timeline

Jan 2024 - May 2024 (4 months)

Team

Aman Rawat

UX Researcher

Carl Fan

UX Researcher

Rushal Butala

UX Researcher

Shujun Li

UX Researcher

Mo Ibrahim

Senior Product Manager

Tara Pugh

Senior Product Designer

Skills

Stakeholder Interviews, User Research, Competitive Analysis, Heuristic Evaluation, Usability Testing

My Contributions

As a UX Researcher, I...

  • Led stakeholder interviews to align on business goals and constraints
  • Recruited and conducted semi-structured interviews with microbusiness owners
  • Facilitated competitive analysis and heuristic evaluations of Quicken Simplifi's beta product
  • Led usability testing sessions to identify adoption barriers
  • Synthesized research findings across multiple methods using affinity mapping

Outcome/Impact

Presenting actionable insights

Presented actionable recommendations for improving usability, navigation, and user trust

Positive reception with plans to implement streamlined dashboards

Positive reception, with plans to implement streamlined dashboards

Background

Quicken Simplifi is positioned as an affordable solution for freelancers and microbusinesses – for people positioned between personal finance apps and full-fledged enterprise solutions. The value proposition was clear: separating personal and business finances, simplifying workflows, and providing real-time financial insights.

Problem statement

As Quicken was gearing for the launch of their new features – project management and taxation support – the simplifi team wanted us to investigate how microbusiness owners currently manage their finances, and identify pain points in their workflows to provide a set of recommendations to improve adoption of Quicken Simplifi. With this our starting point was:

How might we improve the adoption of Quicken Simplifi by the freelancer and microbusiness community?

Interviews

What our stakeholders had to say

We want to specifically target the users that use Excel and not Quickbooks, as we believe that they are the ones who are looking for a simpler solution to manage their finances
I conducted interviews with the 2 key stakeholders – the Senior Product Manager and Senior Product Designer. The goal was to understand their vision for the product and business goals. This set the foundation for the user base I wanted to focus on and the competitors I wanted to analyze.

What our users had to say

I recruited 5 microbusiness owners (1-10 employees) around Ann Arbor and conducted semi-structured interviews of around 30 minutes each to understand their current finance management workflows, pain points, needs and attitudes towards technology. These are some of the key findings I uncovered:

Finding #1: Trust in existing systems

Users had built deep trust in their current tools, not because they were good, but because they were known. They understood how errors happened, knew how to fix them, and had built relationships (with friends, accountants, bookkeepers) around these systems

Finding #2: Privacy concerns with new tools

Connecting bank accounts to third-party applications raised significant concerns. Users valued complete control over their financial data and were hesitant to grant access, even if it meant more convenience, especially since their traditional systems like Excel offered them that control.

Finding #3: Comfort with the familiar

Users had developed muscle memory and workflows around their current systems. Even if those workflows were inefficient, they were predictable. The cognitive cost of learning something new outweighed the promise of future efficiency.

Analytical Phase

Competitive Analysis

Competitive Analysis
I did a comprehensive analysis, choosing 6 competitors (direct, indirect and parallel) to understand Quicken's strengths, weaknesses, and market positioning. This helped identify gaps in the market and opportunities for Quicken Simplifi to differentiate itself.

Quicken's strongest selling points were its affordability and number of features. However, I conducted the analysis with a focus on Pricing, Ads (to address concerns around privacy), Onboarding Guide (for ease of learning), and Customizability (to address comfort with familiar systems). Quicken fell short in onboarding and customizability compared to its competitors – which had comprehensive onboarding guides and templates to customize personally and address the learning curve.

Heuristic Evaluation

Heuristic EvaluationUsing Nielsen's 10 usability heuristics, I evaluated Quicken Simplifi's beta product against 9 of the heuristics to identify friction points that might prevent users from reaching the project management and taxation features. Critical Issues I uncovered included:

  1. Inconsistent Layout and Interaction: Users couldn't build a mental model because the system's layout did not fit with the users' expectations. For example, there were variations in design styles of section like "Goals" when accessed from different parts of the app.
  2. Lack of Confirmation for Critical Actions: Deleting a transaction had no confirmation dialogue. Saving an invoice sometimes showed an error but saved anyway. Users couldn't trust what the system was doing.
  3. Hidden Navigation for Key Features: The tax reporting section was buried three levels deep. Project management lived in a different area entirely
  4. Redundant Classification Systems: The system had tags, categories, and flags–all doing similar things. Users couldn't distinguish between them, leading to inconsistent data organization.

What our usability tests revealed?

Usability Testing
I conducted moderated usability testing with 6 participants who fit our target profile: microbusiness owners with 1-10 employees, currently using Excel or basic tools, interested in better financial management. We gave them 3 tasks focused on the key features:

  1. Set up a new project and track billable hours
  2. Generate a tax report for quarterly review
  3. Create a recurring invoice for an existing client
Each session lasted about 60 minutes, including a pre-test questionnaire, the tasks, and a post-test interview. Every session had an interviewer, a note-taker, and was recorded for later analysis. With this, I combined all qualitative data from interviews, usability testing, competitive analysis, and heuristic evaluation using affinity mapping to identify reasons for adoption barriers. These are the 3 critical barriers I uncovered:

Barrier IconUsers struggled with technical language and information overload
Barrier IconConcern for third-party integrations due to habits and trust
Barrier IconNavigation was inefficient, with redundant or misplaced features

Recommendations

Recommendations

Simplify Language and Layout:

  • Use color coding for income/expenses
  • Add tooltips for complex features
  • Ensure all navigation elements are visible without scrolling
  • Incorporate a search bar for easy access

Persona-Driven Features:

  • Enable users to customize dashboards based on their preferences, add/remove features based on their workflow
  • Highlight high-demand features like taxation during tax season in more accessible locations

Shortcuts for Navigation:

  • Introduce modular cards for customizable dashboards
  • Allow users to create personalized shortcuts for frequent tasks

Reflection

Resistance is data

When users resist change, it's often a sign that there is more to understand. In this case, the resistance to adopting Quicken Simplifi wasn't just about the features it was about their existing systems, workflows and trust.

Familiarity is a feature

Design decisions improving familiarity can make a big difference in user comfort and solidify their mental model of the system. For example, making tax reports look like tax forms instead of a typical HTML form is a feature that reduces cognitive barriers to adoption.
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