Project Case Study
Target
Role: UX/UI Designer
Project Type: End-to-End UX Case Study
Tools: Figma, paper-sketching and user research methods
Timeline: Google UX Certificate
The project uses the full UX design framework.
Design a lightweight, intuitive dashboard that enables small business owners to:
- Manage inventory efficiently
- Create and track invoices
- Monitor profit, loss and tax information
- Reduce complexity compared with traditional accounting platforms
Empathise
Problem statement: Small business owners selling online often rely on multiple tools to manage inventory, invoices, and finances. These tools are often complex, time-consuming, and not designed for users who manage both physical and digital products.
They needed a simple way to track inventory, send invoices and understand profit, loss and tax implications.
User Survey & Personas
I conducted a survey to identify potential users and their pain points. From this research, I created four additional personas: Tej, Alexandria, John, and Christy, to validate needs across different business types and experience levels.
Define: Synthesis & Analysis
The users wanted clear, accessible dashboards for forecasting.
Inventory management is needed to support both physical and digital items.
Tax visibility was important, but only at a high level, e.g. tax contributions and profit level.
Overly complex tools created friction and reduced adoption, e.g. having to add APIs for multiple services.
User journey mapping for Christy, John, Tej and Alexandria
The Approach: Ideation
I experimented with the Crazy 8s exercise to explore solutions rapidly. Initial concepts included:
- An accounting-focused dashboard
- A digital postbox for invoices
- Physical store inventory tracking
- Email-based order ingestion
The point of this exercise was to explore as many options as possible, from the conventional to the unconventional.
To help with understanding the structure of apps and how I use them, I put together 8 of my most commonly used apps, including YouTube Music, Netflix, Upwork and QuickBooks.
I looked at how they organised content, what types of methods they used to encourage engagement and how they laid out content cards.
Competitive Analysis
I analysed QuickBooks, FreshBooks, Xero, and Zoho Management, evaluating them against persona needs.
To ground ideas in real-world patterns, I reviewed existing solutions such as QuickBooks, Trello, Upwork, and Zoho. I determined that email and freelance platform integrations were unnecessary, as financial data could already be captured through bank transactions.
Zoho offered the most features, but suffered from usability issues due to complexity.
QuickBooks provided a clearer, more familiar experience.
The Ideal Service: Market Gaps
Objective: To define the best possible service based on existing market gaps.
Universal Accessibility: Every part of the platform should be fully navigable via keyboard and inclusive of all user needs.
Stability Guarantee: Ensuring that critical tasks, like VAT handling and invoicing, are never interrupted by software bugs or forced system upgrades.
Seamless, Error-Free Migration: To stay ahead, a service must offer a reliable data migration process from both desktop and other cloud platforms to prevent data loss.
Transparent, Flat-Rate Pricing: Solving the frustration of “unfair” tiered models by offering simple, transparent pricing with no hidden or “unlawful” charges.
Unified Feature Set: Instead of requiring “too many integrations” to be functional, the ideal service should have a robust set of built-in features while maintaining “Ease of Use”.
Human-Centric Support Model: The ideal service must resolve the “lack of human approach” seen in competitors by providing empathetic, accessible, and friendly UI.
Prototype
The final prototype featured a centralised dashboard with:
- Profit and loss tracking
- Invoice status tracking
- Tax summaries
The experience supported both physical and digital inventory in a single workflow, improving accessibility and efficiency for small business owners.
Design decision
I chose to design a pared-down, QuickBooks-inspired experience, prioritising clarity, ease of use, and reduced cognitive load.
I created paper sketches, low- and high-fidelity wireframes, and iterated based on user priorities.
An early concept included email integration for invoices, but usability testing showed this added unnecessary complexity. Since invoices were generated within the app, tracking and returns could be handled internally.
Key User Flows
Adding new inventory
Creating new invoices
Updating inventory
Design iterations led to:
Camera for photos of physical stock
Image uploads for inventory items
CSV uploads for bulk additional inventory
Testing
Initially, I designed separate user journeys that were later combined into one. This resulted in:
- Over 30 unnecessary screens
- A user flow that was difficult for users to complete
- After feedback:
- Reduced the experience to essential screens
- Added five meaningful interactions to create a usable prototype
- Built reusable components to improve consistency and iteration speed
Outcome
Key Takeaways
The final design delivered a streamlined inventory and invoicing experience tailored to small businesses’ needs, balancing functionality with simplicity.
- Simplicity often outperforms feature-heavy solutions.
- Early validation of user flows prevents overdesign.
- Component-based design enables faster iteration and scalability.
- The competitive analysis revealed important priorities (P1) but also P3-5 priorities that would need to be solved over time. This exercise tests my ability to determine what could be solved and the opportunities for cross-team collaborations.
Final
Designed with WordPress
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