The Role
When the Taxlify team approached me, they had already developed a set of mockups and a foundational concept. Their core objective was to improve usability, navigation, and visual consistency across the product. However, they faced a major roadblock: no in-house UI/UX expertise to bring the product to life. The startup had previously worked with multiple freelance designers, but due to the product’s complexity and the need for accounting-specific knowledge, none had succeeded in delivering a scalable, intuitive interface.
Project Summary
The R&D tax credit provides companies with a powerful opportunity to reduce their income tax liabilities—but claiming it is a notoriously complex and documentation-heavy process. As a result, many businesses turn to accounting and advisory firms for help. However, these firms often lack the internal capacity to manage this intricate work efficiently. Taxlify was built to solve this problem. The platform serves as a dedicated tool for accounting, consulting, and tax law firms to offer streamlined R&D tax credit services. It aims to simplify collaboration, documentation, and compliance, while handling the nuances of tax workflows through technology.
The Challenge
Taxlify was tackling a highly technical problem space—tax law, financial compliance, and client collaboration—all within one platform. The existing mockups lacked cohesion. Navigation was unclear, the information architecture was fragmented, and users didn’t receive proper feedback or guidance through their tasks. There were also no distinct flows for firm-side users versus clients, leading to confusion across the board.
The design also had to conform to the limitations of an in-house React-based component library, which restricted stylistic choices but offered speed and consistency in implementation.
The Goal
- Simplify user flows for both firms and their clients across complex tax workflows.
- Redesign navigation to reflect user mental models and support scalability.
- Create clear distinctions between firm-side and client-side interfaces.
- Build on top of an existing UI framework without sacrificing UX quality.
- Support collaboration and communication around document requests, questionnaires, and timelines.
- Deliver a high-fidelity, launch-ready MVP that would help the startup acquire real users and test the market.
Phase 1
Discover
& Empathize
The team had a strong grasp of the technical domain but lacked structured UX thinking. I began with a full audit of their current product and prototypes, mapping out key frictions. User interviews with internal stakeholders highlighted common pain points: users couldn’t track where they were in the app, questionnaires were overwhelming, and document handling relied too much on offline communication.
Key friction points included:
We used Inspectlet to watch how users interacted with the existing product. We uncovered:
- Users couldn’t edit or revisit created projects.
- Navigation state didn’t reflect the current page.
- The layout of forms and tables lacked visual alignment and hierarchy.
- No built-in collaboration tools between firms and clients.
Phase 2
Define
I identified two core user types with different needs:
- Firm Partners/Managers needed to manage multiple clients, monitor engagement statuses, and track requests efficiently.
- Client Representatives (like CFOs) needed to quickly understand requests, upload documents, and complete questionnaires—often with no background in tax or accounting.
This distinction became central to defining the structure of the platform, ensuring tailored dashboards and interactions for each side.
