QB Money Product Insights
QuickBooks is a financial management and accounting software suite for small businesses of all sizes. I worked on the QuickBooks Money team.
Duration Fall 2023 - Winter 2024
Role Design Researcher
Skills UX Research | Data Analysis
Tools Zoom, Reduct, Dscout.
QuickBooks Money Research
Overview
In 2021, Money by QuickBooks was launched as the predecessor to QuickBooks Money. Despite being released exclusively as a mobile platform, it did not integrate into the larger QuickBooks ecosystem and was not advertised on any of the core QB.com experiences. In the fall of 2024, the product progressed to a new stage with the launch of the web-based platform and increased visibility across the QuickBooks lineup and on QB.com.
Research Goal
Problem Statement
The QB Money team wanted to understand how the rebrand and new web product were working for customers.
What does it look like for small business owners to get set up with QB Money?
What is their first impression of the product?
Process
To approach our research goals and questions, I crafted a 3-phase research program. We conducted qualitative research, leveraging in-depth interviews to meet with different customers for each phase of the program. Breaking down the research into these three rapid research sprints would allow us to hone into each specific learning objective, providing us a holistic understanding of the entire customer experience upon completion.
Phase 1: New users
Understand incoming expectations and motivations of customers acquired via our newly-launched QB$ web product. Learn how the product misses, meets, and/or exceeds the expectations.
Phase 2: Frequent Users
Who are power users? What patterns and behaviors did we observe about these individuals? What opportunities exist to better serve these power users and help more users find similar value?
Phase 3: Ex-Users
Identify the moments when customers stopped using the product and why. Solicit feedback on what improvements could be made to have kept users engaged in the product
Methodology
In-depth Interviews & Observation
We wanted to get face-to-face with customers to have an open dialogue with them about their unique experience with QB Money.
Why we pursued these research methods
Diary Study (“Adopt a Small Business”)
To get a deep understanding of what it looks like for brand new customers to onboard and start using QuickBooks Money, we partnered with the “Adopt a Small Business” program at Intuit to follow business owners over the course of 5 weeks.
Customer examples
Customer quotes
Key learnings
A fast and easy sign-up process reflects well on the QB product overall for new customers. Customers were surprised and delighted by the efficiency of the signup process, which matched their needs given that the majority of users are early business owners or businesses of one.
The all-in-one place benefit can be accomplished without everything in one place! This learning tells us that by offering an offering focused solely on two core functions: getting paid & banking, we’re actually able to deliver impact by not overwhelming customers with too much information from the get go.
The professionalism and “big business” associations with the QuickBooks brand is an asset for business owners who have aspirations to grow. Through research we uncovered the expectations and assumptions users had about the product prior to starting, simply due to the associations they make with the brand.
Championing the user’s needs
To advocate for the customer’s needs, I leveraged a framework for putting insight to action. I crafted recommendations, opportunities and provocations. Recommendations were immediate changes and UX enhancements I believed we had to make ASAP to enhance the everyday interactions for customers. Opportunities were areas I believed our product teams should consider prioritizing in the short-term future. Lastly, Provocations were larger considerations that would require a big undertaking but would be critical to ensure we’re anticipating and designing for evolutions in product usage and even emerging audiences given the changing marketplace for small business owners.
Recommendations
Do Now
Opportunities
Do Next
Provocations
Consider for the Future
Business Outcomes
This research directly influenced numerous UX improvements in the onboarding experience that were pushed to product and increased user satisfaction scores by 15%.
The research program also provided greater implications for the QuickBooks organization to consider about the connectivity between products in our ecosystem.
Lessons learned
This was such an exciting space to be working in and I’m grateful for all the lessons I learned while conducting this research.
Stakeholder Management I learned to become in sync with PM’s and their timeline for development. In order for research to drive impact, you have to be very closely aligned with the product management team and their timeline.
XFN Team Collaboration Committing to attending 100% of interviews can be unrealistic for lots of people. To address the issue of scheduling conflicts across my team, which prevented team members from being up to date on all customer interviews, I developed a running deck to recap each customer’s interview, the key takeaways and some video clips & quotes to represent their experiences. Team members told me how helpful they found this system so that they could maintain awareness of learnings from interviews even if they could not attend each one.