TurboTax Style Guide



As the lead designer on TurboTax I sought to bring consistency throughout the app. I used the TurboTax style guide as means to do so. Several other designers had tried unsuccessfully to pull this together, I took a different approach by establishing core rules:

• Everyone in UX was invited. - It did not matter if you were junior or senior, everyone was invited to contribute. The purpose of this was to gain buy-in. No one could say that they would not agree because they did not have a seat at the table. In the past, designers would lock themselves up in a room and write a design document with the expectation that everyone else follow it.
• If you participated, you would get work. - This established the expectations around contributing. The purpose of this was to be clear that you could not show up once a week at the meeting and be an arm-chair quarterback.
• Everyone would get credit for their work. - We wanted to be sure that people were recognized for their contributions. Alongside every article were the people who contributed it. It served not only as way for them to get credit, but also as a point of contact. Prior to this, we had designers that took credit for the labor of others... as soon as that happened, everyone ran for the hills. I wanted to ensure that this did not happen.

It was not the artifact of the guidelines document that brought consistency. It was the team sitting around the table creating a shared mindset and vision for TurboTax that served to define a common design and written language throughout the product.

Whitespace Project: TurboTax FAFSA



At Intuit we were given "10% time" to work on projects of our own. I started TurboTax FAFSA (Free Application For Student Aid) in mine.

If you apply for student aid, there is a common form known as FAFSA that needs to be filled out to apply. Much of this data can be leveraged from their tax document or conversely piped into their taxes to make taxes easier.

I did initial research including customer interviews and surveys to understand what some of the customer problems were in the space. After recruiting several people to work on it, the project gained momentum.

I created a prototype highlighting some of the pain that a TurboTax solution could solve. It eventually got funded and shifted into coding the front-end learning jQuery along the way.

We had TurboTax FAFSA out for a couple seasons, but ultimately it was put to rest. It generated a couple million each year, but for a company that makes billions, it wasn't worth the distraction. It was a fun project while it lasted.