Financial Platform Data Import
Project Overview
The platform was designed to help accountants and auditors efficiently analyze client data for auditing and tax reporting. It offered tools for data cleansing, financial analytics, and automated account mapping, addressing the high complexity and accuracy demands of financial professionals working under tight deadlines.
The Challenge
Accountants often work with messy, inconsistent data from various sources, which slows down their ability to provide insights and meet reporting deadlines. Existing tools lacked flexibility, clarity, and automation - resulting in time-consuming manual processes and increased risk of error.
We set out to:
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Increase the data import task completion rate by at least 20%
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Decrease time-to-completion for the task
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Reduce friction and support requests related to import
My Role
As the Senior UX Designer, I led the end-to-end design process, from discovery to delivery. I spent a lot of time justifying the value of UX Research, since many of the team members were ex-accountants they saw no need to talk to external users.
Key responsibilities included:
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User Research: Conducted interviews and contextual inquiries with auditors and accountants to deeply understand their workflows and frustrations.
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Synthesis & Insight Generation: Mapped findings to key user journeys and identified priority pain points and opportunity areas.
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Heuristic Evaluation: Identified usability issues in the user interface by systematically assessing it against established usability principles.
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Workshop Facilitation: Ran collaborative design workshops with stakeholders to co-create solutions and align on priorities.
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Prototyping & Design: Created wireframes and interactive prototypes to explore design directions and validate workflows.
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Cross-functional Collaboration: Worked closely with product managers, engineers, QA, and documentation teams to ensure smooth implementation and UX alignment across team.
The Research
Problem Statement
How might we clarify the import process, increase import methods and reduce import failure and support calls?
When I joined, the imports team had already created a prototype which was deployed with little satisfaction from users. It was unintuitive, very strict and didn’t offer any flexibility as to where users could get their data from. It forced users to go through a process that was awkward and missing some key features that allowed successful import of the data required to run the platform. In addition, other designers were siloed in their product areas, collaboration was low.
Target Persona
Jane Fintech is an auditor for Deloitte. Her primary responsibility is importing and mapping the data used to feed the audits for her company's clients and also analyzing that data for risks, errors, fraud and anomalies.
Jane primarily imports business financial transactions from Excel sheets but sometimes needs to be able to import from QuickBooks and other online accounting platforms. Jane’s files are often larger than 2GB and include 30,000+ records.
Interviews
After some convincing and advocating for UXR, the new leadership allowed us to contact distributors directly for user research. We interviewed 12 accountants to determine their workflows and frustrations.
The interviews were conducted over Google Meet and in person, then results were analyzed to create insights that were shared with the team.
Brainstorming
We set up several brainstorming sessions with the team and using the research results, reviewed the motivations, touchpoints and emotions of the existing user journey.
The workshops allowed the team to co-create the solution, gather stakeholder feedback and align on priorities while making sure the business goals were aligned with the user needs.
User Journey Map
Click to enlarge (note that team comments have been removed)
I facilitated this workshop using Miro to analyze the research findings, align the team on user pain points and opportunities and raise awareness of the value of UX activities. This also helped us to determine the stages or steps in the experience and touch points.
Participants were: design, product, engineering, subject matter experts.
Key Research Findings
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Users didn’t understand which file types were supported
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Errors weren’t clearly explained, causing confusion
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There was no visual confirmation of progress or success
These insights highlighted the need for a more transparent, guided experience.
The Design
Design Approach
To address the issue, I collaborated with product and engineering to map out the current flow, then redesigned it based on both user needs and backend requirements:
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Created user flows that reflected real-world steps and highlighted technical dependencies
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Added validation patterns to catch common errors early
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Introduced progress indicators and tooltips
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Designed a clear confirmation screen with next steps
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Added visual cues for error states
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I reduced visual noise on the summary screen by grouping related content and simplifying the color palette, which made key actions 30% easier to find (based on usability testing)
User Flows
Click to enlarge (note that team comments have been removed)
We used Figma to create the user flows which map out the user's steps to complete the import. This helped us understand the logical sequence of actions and ensured the experience is clear, efficient, and aligned with user goals. The engineers had some valuable insights into the process so we ended up making a few changes to the flow due to the way data is processed.
Participants were: design, product, engineering, subject matter experts.
Prototype and Design Rationale - Figma file
Click arrow in top right to expand (note that team comments have been removed)
I then created a high fidelity prototype using Figma and since we had our design system in place, most of the components with baked in accessibility were already created in addition to our overall brand and design guideline which I followed. The step component for the wizard was new and along the way we added zebra striping to our tables and altered the button text style based on some user feedback from the usability test phase of this prototype.
Meeting with product and engineering, we broke the project down into sprints and I created a separate Figma page for each user story which contained all the edge case designs and empty states.
Figma Interactions
Click to enlarge (note that team comments have been removed)
Included in this screen shot are the interactions shown in Prototype Mode in Figma. They illustrate the interactions including triggers and navigation type designed to make this prototype feel as real as possible. The design system provides variants of each component used to design such things as button states etc.
This was very helpful in testing the interactions and communicating intent to stakeholders and engineers. It bridges the gap between static design and live experience and ensures the design is easy to understand.
Next Steps
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The design was broken down into 4 phases, and 2 week sprints were planned for a duration of about 10 months.
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An extended roadmap of 24 months was also created to allow for out of scope features we planned to add later.
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I worked closely with the engineering team during this time to design last minute edge cases and updates to the design system to support their work.
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I also worked closely with product during this time to plan the upcoming releases and monitor Pendo in the app.
Some Key Achievements
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Designed intuitive workflows for importing and cleaning complex financial data.
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Reduced time spent on manual account mapping through intelligent automation features.
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Improved transparency in analytics tools, enabling faster, more confident decisions.
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Created a scalable design system to ensure consistency and accelerate future development.
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Received positive feedback from pilot users on the improved clarity and reduced cognitive load in the platform.
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Increased awareness of the value of UX and accessibility in the company, UX now included in planning and strategy.
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The design team working together, critiquing each other’s work and improving overall design process.
Outcome & Impact
Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)
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40% decrease in user confusion during import.
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Fewer engineering escalations related to import errors.
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Faster average time to task completion+50 import types.
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+1200 new licenses (revenue increase).
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-50% support calls about import.
Objectives and Key Results (OKRs)
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Improve Software Usability Score (SUS) by 30%.
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Identify features for further enhancement.
Reflection
This project reinforced the importance of designing for complexity without overwhelming users. By focusing on real-world workflows and involving users early and often, we were able to build a platform that feels powerful yet approachable - a critical balance in the finance industry.