BigTime Software

Invoicing Redesign

Role: UX Research Intern

Introduction to BigTime Software

BigTime Software is a company focused on providing time-tracking, billing, and project management software for customers from various types of professional services industries.

My Role

I was a UX Research Intern working alongside the Product/UX team. As the only one on the team focused on UX research, I led all the research initiatives with support from my manager, the Director of User Experience. During my internship, the main project I worked on was conducting research for the redesign of the invoicing process.

Timeline

Over the course of 12 weeks, we followed a timeline to ensure we met deadlines on time, and were able to come up with insights for design improvements!

Research Statement

I came up with a research statement to set goals and make sure we stayed on track when conducting research and finding pain points customers were facing with the current state on invoicing.

"How can we streamline the invoicing process for customers to make it easier and faster to approve and send invoices?”

Additional Research

As research at BigTime Software was becoming more of a priority during my internship, I was tasked with researching some unmoderated user testing applications to use during our invoicing redesign project. Based on the company’s budget and my findings, we decided that “Lyssna” would be the best application for our needs.

Current State Insights

Based on interviews with current customers there were a few major pain points which were addressed in the new invoicing designs:

  1. How would you create a new invoice?

  2. How would you adjust an invoice time entry?

  3. How would you approve this invoice?

Usability Testing and Prototype Reviews

I was able to attend several usability testing sessions with customers, and was even able to run through the scripts I wrote, and ask follow up questions during the sessions. Our sessions were held over zoom, and users would be asked to share their screens and go through each tasks we presented. I observed and took notes during the entire process. Additionally, we had Gong recordings on every zoom meeting, so it was easy to go back and observe our tests for further analysis.

  1. Complex User Interface and Navigation - unclear required fields, excessive clicks required to access pages, etc.

  2. Inadequate Visibility and Reporting - firms are spending an average of 40 minutes per day on invoice details page due to unclear visibility

  3. Dated look and feel

Script Writing

With paint points uncovered, I moved onto writing research scripts to use during our moderated usability tests with customers to test the new invoicing designs. I focused on tasks which would uncover whether or not there were enough improvements made to address common pain points. Since we primarily wanted qualitative data, the goal was to have tasks that would allow us to observe their clicks and thought process during moderated usability tests. Some sample tasks I created included:

Participant Recruitment

We recruited new and long-standing customers to test out the new invoicing designs. We decided to send invitations to these customers, and offered a gift card as incentive, which resulted in us being able to schedule both moderated and unmoderated usability tests to gather data. The unmoderated tests were via Lyssna, and we were able to see screen recordings of participant interactions after their tests were completed.

Analysis and Synthesis of Data

Using my notes and the notes gathered from our Gong recordings, we organized our findings into insights to analyze whether the design changes met our customer needs. We also utilized ChatGPT to aid us in coming up with insight categories . We discovered that while our new designs looked much more clean and modern and had generally improved, there were still some changes to be made. Feedback from our usability test gave us the following insights:

Next Steps and Recommendations

Based on the insights from our usability tests, we determined that some designs would be necessary. We came up with the following to address the lingering pain points from customers:

Impacts of Research

The research we conducted helped to start the process of redesigning the invoicing pages of BigTime’s website, and allowed for us to discover where the design of the invoicing pages needs to be developed further. Since invoicing is one of the most important parts of BigTime’s products, it is vital to continually improve it. Additionally, with my role being the first ever UX research position at the company, I believe the presentation of my work allowed a beginning point for the appreciation of UX research at the company!

Reflections

I am very proud of myself for having not only completed this internship, but having learned so much throughout it. There was never a time where I felt like I wasn’t learning something. I am happy to have had such an amazing Product/UX team to work with, and I’m also grateful that the other departments at BigTime were so willing to let me in on their meetings and collaborate so really see what it’s like working somewhere with such a high level of inter-departmental collaboration. Attending my first real prototype review and being able to participate was also such an amazing experience. I truly learned the process of UX research through my many projects during this internship, and I am happy to have contributed so much! I’d also love to thank my manager, Gretchen, because no matter how busy she was, she never failed to give me advice, and helped during every step of the process!

Project Duration: 12 weeks

  1. Much more clean and modern look and feel

  2. Items are more clearly labeled and visible

  3. Still too many clicks required to approve invoices

  4. Multiple tabs are still required to view all invoices — takes too much time

  5. It takes too long to manually approve every invoice

  1. Create a single page design to approve invoices to prevent multiple tabs needing to be opened

  2. Consider the creation of an AI feature to assist with approving multiple invoices

    3. Reduce the number of clicks in the navigation to approve invoices