Adinovis Auditor Platform
Product Design | Desktop
6 Weeks
Duration
UX/UI Designer - C.L. Jin
Team
Project Manager - Hari Priya
Visual Lead - Chris Gallegos
UX Designer - Carolyn Wishnousky
About the project
My role
In this project, I helped the team to analyze data, establish the information architecture, and build the foundation of interaction design and visual identity for the product.
Besides, I assisted our design lead and manager in engaging with the client and collaborating with the development team.
Project Summary
Adinovis is a digital platform that empowers the auditors to engage with their clients, firms, and partners during the auditing process. For the first time, team members will no longer need to communicate and share files through email constantly. By integrating collaboration tools and back-end databases, all team members are now able to stay on one platform and work closely.
The current industry
In the current industry, auditors have formed a set of workflows. Starting from the interaction with the client, fixing the financial data, and creating the final reports. Throughout the process, auditors use different software tools to help them accomplish different tasks and pursue a more efficient and stable way of working. However, using different software and tools have resulted in low-efficiency, pressure, and unnecessary distraction to the professionals.
Our goals
Our client is a senior auditor with more than 20 years of work experience. He owns a professional audit team and holds around 30 clients‘ accounts. Throughout his career, he has become more aware that the auditing industry needs a unified digital solution to meet today’s needs. Our goals are to design a practical solution that empowers the auditor to engage with their customer.
High-Level Goals
Design a solution that digitalized 75 percent of the current workflow.
Focus on the main persona - Auditor, and design an MVP product.
The new solution needs to allow auditors to emigrate to a new software platform easily.
Research
User’s Insight
Through our research and interviews, we discovered that the inconsistent work style was the main issue that caused the user’s frustration and low efficiency.
“Whatever it is, the way you tell your story online can make all the difference.”
““I want to use a more user-friendly software with modern interface design.””
““I want to be able to collaborate with my team members when working on my client’s financial data.””
Deeper Insight
The business
A platform that allows the auditors to engage and create financial reports with their clients
The user
A platform that allows the auditors to engage and create financial reports with their clients
Motivation
Needs to keep the work consistency and stay within one tool
Wants to receive real-time notifications for issues, changes, and advice from other team members.
Hard to see the sign-off status
Wants to ease categorize the account(mapping)
Expecting a familiar user experience
Problems
Engage with the client from end-to-end
Able to categorize the account
Quick editing and referencing
hard to receive comments and issue reports from others
Check the sign-off status
Solutions
Integrate the current workflow into the new product experience
Design an engagement letter and letter templates
Integrate the database of lead sheet code and GIFI code catalog
Create the quick document view, and allows the auditors can link the key elements with the data table
My first mission: a two-days run
After we settle for the foundation of the app, we received a request from the client to design the prototype within four days, which was the first task I had been assigned. During the weekend, I needed to designed 32 wireframes based on the use cases and ready to iterate with the team on Monday.
Solutions
How we empower the user
Client Onboarding
An engagement letter defines the legal relationship (or engagement) between a professional firm (e.g., law, investment banking, consulting, advisory, or accountancy firm) and its client(s). During the client onboarding process, auditors can select the template to create the engagement letters and send them to the client.
Financial statements
Financial statements present the results of operations and the financial position of the company. Four main statements are the balance sheet, income statement, statement of cash flow, and statement of changes in equity.
Trial Balance
Trial balance is a list of closing balances of ledger accounts. It is the first step towards the preparation of financial statements. It is usually preparing to assist in the drafting of financial statements.
Users can quickly search in the drop-down menu and select the leadsheet code. They can also add, delete, and duplicate the cell for quick editing.
Reports
The final step is to create the reports. The reports combine all the financial data and legal documents. They usually send to the client by the auditors at the end of the process.
Research
Understand the Roles
There are several roles in the auditing process. Understanding the relationship between them has helped us understood auditors' responsibility and oversaw the interaction.
Audit Team: It includes auditors, preparers, reviewers, partners, and managers. They are the primary members that ensure the accuracy and objectivity of the final reports.
Company and Firm: According to the law, companies require to hire a third-party auditor for their financial reports. The purpose of this is to stay objective and accurate. The firm is the employer of the auditor, and the company is the client.
Meet Our User
Edwin is an experienced auditor who has more than 10 years of experience and holds around 20 clients regularly. During his work, he needs to switch between multiple tools, open multiple files, and view documents on different screens, which makes his work very inefficient. He hopes there is a new tool that can help him accomplish most of the tasks during his work.
Paint Points
Switching between different tools for different tasks decreases the efficiency of work.
Needs to continually check different documents when edits account categories and reference files.
Checking all the sign-off status is harder and more time-consuming.
Needs
Needs to keep the work consistent and stay within one tool.
Wants to receive real-time notifications for issues, changes, and advice from other team members.
Wants to see the sign-off status.
Problem & Hypothesis
Problem Statement
Our user, Edwin, is overwhelmed by the current auditing process. During his work, he often uses different digital solutions for different tasks and purposes. This fragmented workflow decreases the efficiency of the auditing process and adds unnecessary pressure on his shoulder. He needs a new auditing software that allows him to work closely with his clients and team members.
Hypothesis
By bringing all the stakeholders to one platform and digitalize 80 percent of workflow, we believe the new solution will cut down the time from 100 hours to around 10 hours.
Challenges
Familiarity vs. New Wheel
During our design process, we have faced different design challenges and constantly meeting the deadline or milestone. Time and budget don’t allow us to research design. Our research went parallels while designing wireframes and solutions.
After my first two-day mass production, we iterated the design decision with the client, the users, and the development team along the way.
How I over come the challenge
Our first step was adapting to the current industry workflow. By bringing in the industry-standard working process, we believe Adinovis will create a familiar experience to lower the learning curve of Adinovis and be easy to adapt by the professionals.
Then, I build the sitemap for each auditing step based on user’s needs.
Retro UI Elements
One of our design decision was to capture the retro-UI structure that has applied to the current industry-standard software, CaseWare. Besides, we also inspired by the Windows Vista OS from the 90s. We combined our study with Google material color to give our new design a familiar work style and a comfortable modern visual motion.
CaseWare IDEA - Navigation menu
Windows Visa - Navigation menu
In our early design for the navigation, we adapted some retro UI elements to bring in some familiarity to the design. Those elements included line and folder icons. The design for the navigation menu was mainly focusing on how to quickly guide the auditors to navigate based on their behaviors or work habits.
We discovered that auditors like to memorize different categories by their initial letters. It was the main reason we decided to customize the folder icons with the English letters. In the later version of those icon sets, we changed the letter size and contrasted to increase visibility and readability.
Visual Design
When designing the visual layout, most of the measurements align to an 8-pixel grid applied, which aligns both spacing and the overall layout. Smaller components, such as iconography and typography, can align to a 4dp grid.
