AbstractOps
STARTUP
OVERVIEW
AbstractOps is a platform that helps eliminate the stress, uncertainty, and financial risk of state compliance for remote companies by automating registrations, centralizing state mail, and allowing users to take control of all state tax compliance processes.
I was the only designer on the team, working closely with AbstractOps' engineers, paralegals, and clients.
Overview
State tax compliance is essential in running a business, as registration is required for specific departments in every state employees are located in to legally run payroll. I worked on breaking down the legal process into easier-to-understand steps for users, giving them greater visibility over their responsibilities and how the overall process works.
Problem
Customers often felt lost, as they never knew who was handling the different parts of their registrations and would become frustrated at AbstractOps for delays even if it was actually another party’s fault. This was because the existing experience didn’t properly represent the back-and-forth nature of the process, the responsible parties, or the timeline.
Feature Requirements
Since registration is unique to every state and isn't linear, I needed to find a consistent yet adaptable way to represent all states and their corresponding department registrations. These are some key features the paralegals and I developed for the new experience:
A loose timeline showing what steps are dependent on others, who is responsible for each step, and specific statuses of registrations for specific departments within a state
A clear distinction between actions the user needs to do and actions other parties are responsible for
A place to store registration info and documents
A way to submit and manage issues
Dashboard
The previous dashboard consisted of a single table, which users found too vague, as it failed to flag issues and provide sufficient info about the status of their registrations.
Old State Compliance Dashboard
To give users a better understanding of their registrations at a glance, I created distinct sections for the new dashboard which highlight users’ main goals of seeing what they need to do, the status of things other parties are handling, and a general overview of their states.
New State Compliance Dashboard
State View
The old design showed a sequence of events combining the user’s tasks and other parties’ tasks in one workflow. This was misleading since department registrations aren’t processed one after another like the view suggests, but rather in parallel, each with their own multi-step process performed by different parties.
Old State View
I treated the new state view as a database, which provides an overview of all department registrations and user tasks for a state. By breaking down the state into its departments and responsible parties, users can hold specific parties accountable for different processing stages.
New State View – In Progress Registrations
New State View – Completed Registrations
Issue Management
When issues arose, users would communicate with our team through email or Notion documents for help. External communication made it difficult to keep track of issues, both for clients and for our paralegal team, so I designed a flow within the product for users to submit and manage issues.
Issue Submission & Management
Reflection
QA with engineers
An issue the team has always faced is UI discrepancies between Figma designs and the actual built product. There was often a lack of communication regarding interface issues, so I created a table to lay out any implementation concerns and organize them into one place. This table improved collaboration with engineers and helped ensure that my design intents would actually manifest in the product.
QA Table