Skippr: Modern Cash Flow Finance
Skippr enables a business to forecast cash flow seamlessly online and access cash using a flexible cash flow finance solution.
Skippr helps a business owner sleep better at night as they know they have the cash in bank to pay their staff, the tax department and service typical growing pains. We simply help the customer understand their cash flow better, what best to do to cover any upcoming gaps and provide them access to finance only when they need it.
Why was it a problem that needs to be solved?
Cash flow management is a simple process but a complex problem to solve. It is often a disjointed and unstructured process with various mini-workflows. It is hard for a business owner to focus and prioritise the best courses of action as they can not see the most impactful outcome.
This difficulty means cash flow management is neglected and often leads to insolvency and business default. 80% of businesses that fail, fail due to poor cash flow management.
Goals/objectives:
To form a user journey that makes the process of cash flow management more habitual
To increase the user engagement so they sign in a manage cash flow more than 4 times per month
To form a user journey that helps highlight the value of using invoice finance as a sustainable cash flow solution
Who are Skippr’s customers?
Primary — small business owners
Secondary — bookkeepers, accountants , business advisors
My Role:
I worked collaboratively in a team with 3 other UX designers Wayne, Sanket and Bom on a Agile project.
Previous Research provided to us:
Customer personas, Customer journeys, Style guides. List of problems and issues from current users, enhancements and features desired by exisiting user
Our Approach:
From our current understanding of the Skippr sign up process, we found that there was no demo about its features and that users were asked to link to their Xero or other account software immediately upon signup.
As a team we created of list of Backlog. We put it up on the kanban board and started working from there. We each choose our avatars and since I love cats, I obviously had a cat as my avatar. This is what I love about being a UX Designer, we get to have fun while doing some serious work.
From the board, we started selecting tasks, sanket and bom setup dummy skipper accounts. Wayne and I started conducting 1 on 1 interviews with finance managers and small business owners.
We conducted the interviews and contextual inquiry to get a better understanding of the current state and for us to know where we needed to focus.
Interview Objectives:
- what were the first impressions when the participants used Skippr.
- what were their reactions when they were asked to link their Xero accounts immediately upon sign up.
- what were their expectations of a positive user experience while they were signing up.
Interview Findings:
1) The fact that one of the participants could not see the calculations that was done by the software, did not make him trust the forecast. (this was a concern that was rasied by the client during the brief as well)
2) The other point that concerned him was the software being free? What was the catch? If it was good and legitimate then why was it free?
3) During the Sign up, the application asked to link to users accounting software like Xero . That raised some concerns as there was no trust established with the application, the participants did not know what the application could do? Or looked like? And more importantly, allowing access to all the companies financial information without any disclaimer or security policy made him very uncomfortable.
Competitor Analysis:
Wayne and I conducted competitor analysis and found that Dryrun and Float provided a demo to users about the features which was clearly lacking with Skippr among other things like not having to link to Xero immediately.
After completing our research the team started ideating and we put our ideas on the wall, we each then walked through the ideas. We voted to decide how to move forward and build our prototype for testing for sprint 1.
Objectives for testing:
View training and add my accounting software to reach the Dashboard.
I want to add a recurring sale of $1000 per month so that I can have accurate data.
I want to watch the demo video on the forecasting page.
I want to generate a report so that I can view my data offline.
I want to apply for finances so that I can fund my cash flow.
Findings from the usability testing 1st Sprint:
- The training was well received by the participants. However the business owners were still not able to use the tool even after viewing the training. (One of our test participant was an existing Skippr user. Post testing, he logged into his account to show us how he was using Skippr, challenges he was facing , why he stopped using it and suggested further enhancements)
- The accountants and bookkeepers felt that they had to move too much between tabs and would like to be able to reach the Dashboards in more than one way.
- Participants liked the new user journey for Sign up.
Feedback and presentation to client:
We presented our feedback from week 1 to client, who felt that our findings were inline with what they had been hearing from their users. However, they were pleased to hear that adding training was well received by the participants.
We wanted to get further alignment in terms of deliverables for week 2. which were:
- Improve the training
- UI of the Dashboard.
Sprint 2:
The team met with the developer, we walked him through our work from wk 1 and got some great insights from him regarding what possible changes could be made easily. He affirmed that training about the application was important. He gave us further direction which caused a bit of a client push towards solution. This is when we pulled back focused on the users and asked our selves, what value can we add to the user’s that is not being addressed right now?
This is when we looked at Problems and enhancements list that was provided by the client.
With deliverables from client, developer feedback, insights from user testing in wk 1, key unmet needs and quick wins from the problem list we proceeded with ideating an MVP.
What we agreed as a team:
- Simplify the training further by reducing the number of steps.
- Reduce the number of tabs, that users needed to switch back and forth to complete tasks, by creating a single dashboard.
- Change the graph and see how the users felt about the forecasting functions, with a different visual representation.
- Simplify the language, move from accounting language to simpler terminology that business owners could understand.
- We were also going to use this testing as a co-design session with user.
Prototyping:
We used photoshop to use the existing template of Skippr and sketch to create new graphs and other features.
Challenges with usability testing in the 2nd Sprint:
A constant challenge with this particular client was that most of the testing was done remotely. Only one participant was able to come in for testing
The challenge with remote testing is that, there were delays during the call. Although we were able to see the screen of the participants, we were not able to guide them due to delays and this lead to confusion.
One participant cancelled last minute. We booked another participant, who later forgot about our testing and if we had not called to check on him, we would have waited for the entire hour.
Overall it was a great learning experience, about what can go wrong, what we need to anticipate and what to be prepared with when testing remotely.
Quick check list:
- Confirm the time zone to set the meeting time and for sending meeting invitation.
- Check if they are familiar with the software that will be used for testing , in our case we were using zoom.us.
- ALWAYS get their phone numbers. Because even though participants have confirmed via email. They get busy and sometimes forget. We ended up calling most of all our participants after waiting 5 to 15 mins online, because they were caught up with work and forgot to login.
Feedback from Testing 2nd Sprint:
The Participants liked the training, although for build scenario, they preferred that there was a step by step guide, for both first time users and also existing users, who had not used the application for sometime.
The simplified language was not well received, participants felt that it was confusing with a profit and loss statement and since Skippr was cash flow the current terminology was good.
UI changes in wk 2 were well received, however font and readability were still an issue
Reporting was a key function that users wanted.
A dashboard condensed to one page was positively received by the participants.
Feedback from the Cofounder:
“ The amount of work that you guys have done in two weeks is great, you should be proud”
*Two weeks later a number of our recommendations were implemented including the changes to the graphs.
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