Professional Experience Highlights

Enterprise Tax Software - UX Research & Design


Role: UX Researcher & Designer | Duration: 2013-Present | Company: EY

Helping My Place improve their group creation experience.

MyPlace is a platform to share your home with the people you trust. Your family, your friends and your trusted communities/networks. The idea of 'Groups on MyPlace is that we all have different groups of friends and communities in the real world and we want to enable users to recreate or join the groups that are relevant to them and who they want to share their home with.

Featured Research: Data Collection Tool Adoption Study

Challenge: A new automated data collection feature had low adoption rates among tax professionals, who continued using traditional Excel-based workflows despite the tool's advanced capabilities.


Research Question: "How might we make it easier for users to adopt automated data collection tools in their established professional workflows?"

My Research Process

Participant Recruitment & Structure:

  • Conducted in-depth interviews with 5 tax professionals across different experience levels (Staff to Senior)

  • Ensured representation across user personas to capture varying needs and behaviors

  • Applied behavioral psychology principles to understand resistance to workflow changes

Key Research Methods:

  • Contextual Inquiry: Observed how users integrated (or didn't integrate) new tools into existing processes

  • Task Analysis: Mapped current vs. proposed workflows to identify friction points

  • Psychological Barriers Assessment: Applied change management theory to understand adoption resistance

Critical Insights Discovered:

  1. Awareness Gap: Users weren't aware the feature existed - a classic discoverability problem

  2. Mental Model Mismatch: Users didn't understand the data flow between systems, creating uncertainty

  3. Process Integration Challenges: The tool didn't fit into established team workflows and timing

  4. Customization Needs: Professional requirements varied significantly between clients, but the tool was too rigid

Research-Driven Recommendations

Based on findings, I proposed solutions addressing both psychological and practical barriers:


Immediate Wins:


  • Integration into existing templates and question banks (addressing discoverability)

  • Clear data flow documentation (reducing cognitive load)

  • Automated migration prompts for existing projects (reducing manual effort)


Long-term Solutions:


  • Customizable field options to meet varying client needs

  • "Smart" roll-forward capabilities to demonstrate clear value over Excel

  • Training program focusing on workflow integration rather than just feature explanation


Impact & Validation

  • Research findings directly informed product roadmap priorities

  • Identified that 60% of adoption barriers were process-related, not feature-related

  • Recommendations led to the development of automated roll-forward functionality

  • Established framework for future feature adoption research

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