When working at Reckon I was in charge of creating an amazing customer experience in a new product offering. At the time it was Reckon’s first cloud offering and was positioned to continue pushing forward Reckon’s commitment to user-centric design. Reckon One is designed to be a simple to use accounting platform, that is customisable and feature rich, but flexible at the same time with modules that can be switched on and off as required. This modular approach meant that customers are only having to pay for the pieces of functionality they intend on using.
Reckon One was created by Agile teams following a Scrum methodology and I was responsible for oversight of the customer experience (but I also couldn’t help getting my hands dirty). I worked with the product owner and business analysts to determine product needs, worked with them to develop the product strategy and understand it’s place within the competitive environment.
Once the market placement and intent was determined, we were able to move forward and start to draw up a customer journey, understanding all of the touchpoints our customers are going to have with us and trying to streamline this as much as possible to minimise the amount of time required in the software so that people can focus on running their business.
Key activities performed:
- Product strategy
- Sketching
- Wireframing and Storyboarding
- Customer Journey Mapping
- Prototyping
- UI Design for desktop and mobile
- Functional Specifications
- Scrum methodology (Agile work)
The product development journey began with a series of design sprints and an understanding of the functionality that would be required. I was responsible for sketching out the journey and translating technical and legislative requirements into an information flow which would still be simple and easy for our users regardless of their level of previous experience with accounting software.
After defining the information flows required to complete user tasks, I was then able to define an information architecture for the software, creating product navigation and screen mappings that were easy to understand. I created storyboards of the user experiences and then created corresponding wireframes to be placed into the product backlog for further consideration and development.
I created interactive prototypes to test new features and have a greater understanding of how they interact with the larger product (most others were focused purely on the current sprint, but I kept more of a strategic view to ensure as a team we were able to stay on track and keep things simple for customers). Once the prototypes have been proven and tested, high fidelity UI designs were created with annotations to describe the functional requirements to the development team.
The product was a resounding success for Reckon, and has proven that by following a customer-centric approach it’s possible to delight users and make amazing experiences even when your subject matter is something many people try to avoid, doing their books at the end of the month.