Overview
The Affordable Care Act (ACA) requires companies with 50+ full-time employees to provide health insurance and report to the IRS. This case study focuses on building an ESR Reporting Section for Flock benefits platforms. The feature will simplify compliance reporting, ensure accurate employee data management, and offer resources to help small businesses voluntarily provide health benefits.
Client:
HelloFlock
My Role:
Product Designer
Service Provided:
Dashboard Design, Product
My role
I led the design of the new reporting section to help employers meet the CA requirements more efficiently.
Customer insights and ideation
I partnered with UX researcher, Content Designer and Product folks to uncover insights and translate concepts into features that address customer behaviors and motivations.
Strategy and Vision
I created a prototypes and wireframes to share the vision, design principles.
Design and validation
I designed the reporting experience and collaborated with the UX researchers to validate our designs.
Leadership
I designed and presented work to stakeholders to get by-in from executives, senior stakeholders and many other Flock teams throughout the project lifecycle.
The challenge
To make the customer experience smoother, we set up a dedicated team to handle IRS reporting for our clients. While this improved convenience, it also required more resources and regular communication. With our new feature, we aim to simplify things reducing the effort for both employers and our team while giving employers more control and empowerment.
Customer insights
We conducted customer and market research to drive our planning phase. This included people from several industries, age range and roles. These are the key insights that defined the launch version of the product:
Goals
Ensure ESR compliance by gathering accurate employee data and filing necessary forms on time.
Remain competitive by offering health benefits even though it’s not legally required.
Challenges
Managing data collection from various sources (e.g., hours worked, benefits enrolled) and ensuring error-free reporting.
Pain points
Fear of penalties from inaccuracies, time-consuming data collection, and potential lack of support from third-party providers.
Key features and user stories
Defining the key features and users stories was extremely helpful for us. This allowed us to present them to product and receive feedback. We had a few calls with the stakeholders to refine requirements as much as possible, all of that keeping in mind all the data from users and employees collected.
The employer should be able to remove, update and add employee
The employer should be able to import data and export existing
Data should be retrieve from the Flex system
The employer should enter company information
They should be able to see upload history
The user should be able to upload the hours and wages and remove them
Design
Paychex upholds infamously high standards for the work it produces. This create a culture which sicks to make sure every pieces is being lunch has the level of quality that is characteristic of the company.
For each design phase I went into cycle of designing, reviewing with the UX team and finally reviewing with the stakeholders. This included a big list of artifacts to help everyone to have a clear understanding of the product. This included User flows, sketching, wireframes, final designs and prototype.
Prototyping was the best way to get feedback from everyone, consensus from stakeholders. The prototypes then were used for the user testing sessions.
Testing our assumptions
As soon as we had a consensus between all team members and stakeholders we decided it was a good time to start putting our design in front of the users. We conducted about 5 user testing sessions that helped us to validate our design hypothesis and understand any missing pain point that was not resolved.
To create each prototype, I expended a good amount of time collaborating with my dedicated content designer, UX researcher, UX Lead and some key members of the product team.
We encounter a lot good insights from each sections that pushed us to refine our design to a point that really satisfied the users expectations. After each section, I summarized findings, presented them to the product team, iterated and re-testing if needed.
One of the main user testing insights uncover
During the second step of the flow, the users are supposed to do edits to the list of employers. On the first sessions we presented to users, we have all the employees into an only view table. To do edits the user was supposed to click on an edit button, select the employee and then do the edits in a separated screen. The same steps needed to be taken to add and remove an employee. When promoting the users to edit, remove or edit an employee, they tried to click on the table as if it was editable. 90% of users tried that.
My recommendation was to use an editable component that allow users to do inline edits to the employees. I had a few conversation with the stakeholders to determine development feasibility. The conclusion was positive, we iterated by adding this editable component, retested it, receiving really good feedback from users and appreciation.
Collaboration with Devs
As soon as we have a consensus between the different teams and good results from the last user testing sessions, I started preparing the files to be shared with devs. This included adding as many details as needed and constant communication answering questions and alleviating conners. Every time a new design was completed by devs, I reviewed and confirmed that it was working as expected.
Learnings
It took us a few weeks to refine the requirements to meet the needs of both the users and everyone involved. This was one of the most challenging projects I’ve worked on, mainly because of all the new things I had to learn about the topic. It was truly a learning experience that pushed me to ask questions, do my own research, and maintain clear communication throughout the process. More than just a learning moment, this project reinforced how essential good communication is when working with large teams on complex projects like this.