Finance Pal is an online platform designed for freelancers and small business owners. It enables users to track time spent on client work and record this data for several key purposes: billing clients accurately, monitoring company revenue, and providing a clear overview of outstanding invoices.
Small businesses and freelancers often use dated and inefficient methods for collecting time records and projects descriptions for invoicing clients. Some of these methods could be using an excel spreadsheet or pen and paper.
There are a several issues this can cause because of using outdated methods. The are, inaccurate project descriptions with not enough precision depending on the nature of work, guessing of hours spent on work that could result in overcharging clients effecting business relationships, work time wasted trying to find data, and manually entering data into a spreadsheet.
Providing for small businesses and freelance professionals an accessible invoice management website product that can be used easily throughout the workday on different devices. Reducing time spent on recording time entries for client work, additional project expenses and reducing time wasted on errors being made on billing companies with lost and inaccurate information.
This project was an individual student endeavour. Following the design stages of the UX product lifecycle has enhanced my planning and research skills.
Language - Needs Work
Brand Identity - Needs Work
User Flow - Needs Work
Navigation - Needs Work
Accessibility - Okay
Brand Identity - Needs Work
Language - Good
Features - Good
Brand Identity - Outstanding
User Flow - Outstanding
Language - Good
Features - Outstanding
Brand Identity - Good
User Flow - Good
Navigation - Outstanding
Language - Good
User Flow - Good
Navigation - Outstanding
Language - Good
To better understand different user types, I conducted foundational user interviews with a set of targeted questions. The goal was to identify the frustrations and requirements of employees and freelance creatives. Qualitative research was chosen as it was the most effective method for a small research group.
Personal information being stored by website from using previous invoicing platforms.
During busy periods struggling to keep up with invoicing clients.
If invoices aren’t paid on time.
Descriptions on invoices being incomplete and hard to understand during tax claims.
This is a basic overview of Finance Pal website sitemap with consideration of other pages. The priority for this project has been the main user flow of recording data and generating invoice for client payments.
After initially creating wireframes, I began the process of adding more detail and consideration to user flow and requirements. Effort was made in keeping the design and UI as simple as possible as this website is for small sized companies. I would like to remove the guess work with an intuitive information architecture that does not require a large amount of learning.
During the first round of interviews, I learnt I should have provided more information to participants of what to expect in a low fidelity design usability testing. Initially, I was focused more on the layout and information architecture. During the early stage of testing, I was advised of a better way in labelling dashboard sections with a more logical approach so users would immediately understand what they were viewing.
The initial slide-out menu grouped all links together without any categorisation, making it difficult for users to quickly scan and find what they needed. Observing the confusion and the time users spent deciphering the menu during the usability test, I revised the design to include clear categorisation of the links, improving scannability and ease of navigation.
UI components were checked using WCAG that colours meet AA Compliance.
Easy to read typeface has been selected with a clean and simple design in different weights. The type hierarchy scale system allows the user to decipher different sections.
Labels under icons for screen readers and to allow users to easily understand navigation bar links.
Throughout the Finance Pal design process, the usability studies proved invaluable in shaping the various stages of the user flow. The feedback gathered significantly contributed to simplifying the information presented and eliminating ambiguity, especially on the dashboard.
