background

The project started with a desire from the internal financial team to remove steps of the reimbursement process and avoid managing files and emails.

I had the first kick-off meeting with the team planning this initiative, a product designer who was responsible for the initial user interviews, a product owner, and the financial team. We started working together to gather requirements and validate assumptions on the E2E process (which all employees are familiar with).

user research

As an internal tool, the user research was an easy step to do. We started doing interviews with the stakeholders, discussing and understanding the current process from the different users’ point-of-views, identifying pain points and possible opportunities.

Financial member experience
From the financial team’s point of view, processing reimbursements requires strict oversight to prevent payment mistakes. Reviewing each request and all the receipts files attached, and requesting necessary approvals demand many hours of work, making this process, one of the most time consuming of the team.

Employee experience
We also conducted interviews with employees:
– Frequent travelers who do the process monthly.
– Employees that have passed recently by the process for the first time.
– Employees who have never requested a reimbursement (for measuring expectations).

From an employee’s point-of-view, requesting reimbursement can be a long, bureaucratic, and time-consuming process. Many of the users could only pass through the process with the help of the company’s policy and a tutorial on how to do it. One pain point identified was the spreadsheet template. They need the up-to-date version of the file, download it, fill it out with details, and send it to managers for approval. Any minor errors or missing information can delay or reject claims.

low-fi

During this stage, we organize the information architecture and define the E2E flow based on users’ goals. It’s also a discovery phase, where we gather and validate requirements with stakeholders. Developers use this phase to make high level estimations

hi-fi

The hi-fi process involved building the UI based on what was defined on lo-fi; it also included FE alignment, identifying components and reusable business modules, and implementation estimations.

Styleguide & components

The hi-fi process also included the creation of a mini style guide based on the visual board from our research. Stakeholders wanted a design that felt like a futuristic version of MS Excel while incorporating elements that subtly reflected Portugal, where the financial office is located.

I also delivered a component library to be reused in the future.

results and metrics

Since this project was done with only 20% of the team workload, it took more time to release than I had worked for mb.io. I couldn’t track results and metrics. However, the whole project was excellent for identifying gaps and opportunities in the reimbursement process.

feedback from this company/project