Microsoft Expense is an intranet-based expense-reporting application that allows employees to submit expense reports from anywhere at any time. Microsoft Expense also utilizes a third-party company called Concur to simplify the complexity with international and domestic policies and regulations.
ROLE
Lead designer, perform user studies, research, create wireframes, prototypes and visual design.
DURATION
3 weeks
CHALLENGE
Current users of the site find the website confusing and requires too many clicks to navigate throughout the site. Much of the supporting video content lacks good sound quality, are less relevant today and therefore not useful.
MSExpense 2.0 - Home Page
Getting Started
Training/Resource
Support/Feedback
REDESIGN GOALS
We conducted a study that narrowed down our focus to critical areas of interaction: Browsing, videos, and general content.
Easily Browse content
Structure content that makes it easy for users to digest and encourages interaction.
Video sharing
Empower the end users to share their experience on video.
content
Show relevant content that enables the user to save and access their information on the Cloud.
usability
To improve browsing experience that allows users to files their expense and reimburses information quickly and efficiently.
PERSONA
As primary users of the tool, the following two personas helped us to redesign and prioritize the user’s needs and goals.
Olivia Smith - Retail Marketing Manager
“I am a Retail Marketing Manager that travels one or two times a quarter for business. I have a region that I go to and stay at the same hotels.” Olivia is frustrated by the fact that she is having a hard time finding what she is looking for on the expense site.
Jerry H - Senior Manager of Retail Store
“I supervise a team of 10 and also communicate with vendor partners while overseeing the distribution center. My role is to ensure that products are delivered to the right location.” Jerry is new to the company and wants to learn about filing expense reports. He should be able to find content and consume the information quickly.
Competitive analysis
We analyzed the visual design of other expense sites and examined how content is being organized. The majority of patterns observed had a dashboard look & feel for organizing information.
usability
We conducted user interviews and contextual inquiries to learn about past and existing pain points and constraints.
Discovered
We discovered that users were not sure where to begin when they are on the site, and that the content information was not well organized. We also found that users were clicking links that redirected them to unimportant content.
Design decisions
We decided to simplify the content by making it easily digestible and utilized existing videos to help train our end users. We supported the flexibility for quickly applying different types of information or different languages to the site.
Scoping of requirement issues early in the project had to be addressed to help with client focus of feature prioritization.
Overall, the project was a success, and much was accomplished within schedule. The client was pleased with all deliverables, including the final stages of the project deployment and going live with the website. An NDA prevents me from sharing further details.
