IRIS Elements
“A future-ready cloud accountancy platform”
The problem
IRIS have a loyal customer base, but their technology stack was at risk of falling behind the competition. The accountancy suite is an old, unfriendly desktop application that is becoming unsuitable for the ever changing accountant. Accountant’s are changing and the tools they use need to change too. It was time to move to the cloud.
Goal
Build a cloud-based accountancy platform that is flexible for all types of accountant, all sizes of practice.
The first feature to be released was anti-money laundering. AML may not be the sexiest of tools but compliance is something accountants are audited on and something they need to get right.
My role
I was the UX Lead on the AML feature, covering both UX and UI tasks throughout the project.
Features in scope for initial release
ID checking
Risk assessments
KYC assessments
Suspicious activity reporting
AML dashboard functionality
Process
I sent a survey to those user who were a part of our IRIS Elements Design Community asking who is interested in an anti-money laundering product and would like to speak to us about their process.
I set up discovery sessions with users to find out how they currently manage their anti-money laundering function within their practice. The sizes of the practice varied, as did the style of practice. Some were still very much paper based, and some were eager to to go digital.
From discussions with users I found that the AML process was far too manual and could easily be made more efficient by making it digital.
Some accountants were relying on paper based risk and KYC assessments being completed, scanned and uploaded to their desktop application or company network.
As the process was so manual, this led to some compliance checks being missed, or put off until after a prospect has been converted to a client.
All of the discovery sessions I ran were uploaded to Dovetail, using Dovetail I was able to tag highlights from each interview. This was really useful when coming up with initial wires.
After creating initial wireframe prototypes we reviewed these with users to see what they thought. The feedback was good, users could see that what we were proposing would add real value to how they currently manage their anti-money laundering tasks.
Seeing a prototype, even low-fidelity, helped users see our vision and see how easily it could fit into their process.
The prototypes fuelled more ideas from the users and were able to relate them to experiences they previously had. I was then able to take those common ideas into high fidelity design prototypes.
The AML tab within a client profile. Widgets were created to allow the user to run checks quickly and easily digest their results at a glance.
More widgets were created for the users' home dashboard. These help users understand which clients or prospects require their attention.
Pages of a risk assessment was broken down into pages to help the user focus on their questions in hand. Steps for each page were clearly listed on the right hand side so the user knew where in the process they were up to.
As the user continued through their journey the steps update on the right hand side, and once a whole page is complete, the page's risk level is automatically generated. This was a great help for the users and improved efficiency and quality of the risk assessments they completed.
See for yourself..
During the design process I always build prototypes, both low-fi and hi-fi. Below you can see a video of a hi-fidelity prototype I built in Figma to demo some of the AML features included the initial release.
These prototypes are used to for testing ideas with users, wider product demos and handing work over to developers.
