Role: UX Designer
Project Type: End-to-end UX case study
Tools: Figma, paper sketching and user research methods
Timeline: Google UX Certificate Program
Goal
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 to traditional accounting platforms
Problem
Small business owners selling online often rely on multiple tools to manage inventory, invoices, and finances. These tools are frequently complex, time-consuming, and not designed for users managing both physical and digital products.
They needed a simple way to track inventory, send invoices and understand profit, loss and tax implications.
First stop: Research
User Survey & Personas
I conducted a survey to identify potential users and their pain points. From this research, I created four additional personas—Tedge, Alexandria, John, and Christy—to validate needs across different business types and experience levels.
Key insights:
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
Overly complex tools created friction and reduced adoption [USER PERSONAS IMAGE BELOW – TBC]
Ideation
- I ran a 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
- 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.
Competitive Analysis
I analysed QuickBooks, FreshBooks, Xero, and Zoho Management, evaluating them against persona needs.
- Zoho offered the most features, but suffered from usability issues due to complexity
- QuickBooks provided a clearer, more familiar experience
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-fidelity, and high-fidelity wireframes, iterating based on user priorities.
Key User Flows
- Add new inventory
- Create invoices
- Update inventory
- Design iterations led to:
- Camera functionality for photographing physical stock
- Image uploads for inventory items
- CSV uploads for bulk inventory management
- Clear summaries for profit, loss, and tax tracking
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. [Add Prototype images]
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.
[FINAL PROTOTYPE IMAGE]
Challenges & Learnings
- 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 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
The final design delivered a streamlined inventory and invoicing experience tailored to small business needs, balancing functionality with simplicity.
Key takeaways:
Simplicity often outperforms feature-heavy solutions
Early validation of user flows prevents overdesign
Component-based design enables faster iteration and scalability
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