2023-2024
Visual refresh and new design system library for authentication experiences across Intuit
Overview
The last time authentication experiences were designed was back in 2017 and over the last 6 year we have been incrementally making changes to the UX and UI but we did not implement a singular UI refresh and our experiences started looking old and stagnant. I was the sole designer working on designing all the new UI refresh experiences for all of Intuit’s authentication experience. I have successfully scaled the new UI patterns to different device platforms and Intuit product themes including dark mode.
Since my work is currently being implemented, I created a fully functioning design library that can be used across Intuit’s design teams and configured for specific use cases.
Role
Lead designer
Skills
Visual design
Design system
User research
Team
Myself
Product manager
3 engineers
Customers want more consistency
Our goals with UI refresh
Improved interactions
How might we better integrate authentication with product experiences to minimize the feeling of context switching?
How might we take into consideration the new app loading experience?
Our success metrics
Do no harm
No negative impact to business KPIs.
Increased sign in speed
Reducing friction for customers, while giving them the choices they need.
Our challenge
Web platform experiences
Improved messaging
How might we break up content into simpler, bite-sized chunks?
How might we dynamically reveal the required legal language at the moment it matters?
Improve developer productivity
Reduce clones and maintenance for auth experiences.
How might we create a new configurable and theme able design library by using the Intuit Design System to have improved interactions, messaging and branding for our authentication experiences?
Improved clarity for brand and legal
How might we ensure the context of Intuit brand within the product experience is clear?
How might we effectively communicate our ecosystem offering without adding cognitive burden?
Since Intuit offers a wide variety of login and account creation experiences tailored to differing needs, we encountered a variety of challenges identified by both our customers and our business stakeholders.
It matters because of the volume of customers at authentication experience across Intuit products
Handle
2.7B
signs in per year
As an Intuit customer, my login experience differs from one Intuit product to another which makes it difficult to identify what type of information is needed to successfully get to my product.
Customer problem statement
As a business, we want to create a singular authentication experience that can be scaled across our Intuit ecosystem without maintaining separate disparate sign in and create access flows, ensuring developer productivity and reducing customer confusion.
Business problem statement
Creates
77M
accounts per year
Used by
21
Intuit apps
Averages
15M
users per day
Supports
200+
products at Intuit
Launched
7
years back
What would we change as a part of UI refresh?
Native app experiences
Placement of authentication experiences in user workflow
Web marketing experiences
Analysis of current state
Current state for native
Current state for web
Customers want simplified experiences
I conducted a competitive audit for sign in and create account experiences and found that:
Customers want simple authentication experiences
Reduce number of steps but maintain high security
Less is more when analyzing input fields and customer education
QuickBooks basic
QuickBooks basic
I explored a wide range of design options for the new authentication experience.
Final recommendation for UI visual refresh
From: Disparate brands with mixed branding
From: Native old create account
To: Scalable and configurable branding solutions
To: Native create account with UI refresh
From: Mobile web old create account
To: Mobile web create account with UI refresh
Mailchimp
Credit Karma
From: Marketing web old create account
Creating additional screens, documentation and specs
QuickBooks horizon
To: Mobile web create account with UI refresh
Pressure testing new designs across multiple user flows and device sizes.
Mobile web
Stationary web
Scaling authentication screens to be product themed. These were approved by BU team design leads.
TurboTax
Creating a brand new design library
I turned all my screens into components and created a new configurable and scalable authentication library using the Intuit Design System to create shareable resources across the company.
Create new screens from the library
Theming screens based on styling input
Big takeaways
Build a design library first and get it right the first time
I had to retroactively build a design library post fleshing out all authentication screens. This made the process extremely tedious and hard to update across multiple files.
Native experiences and library is a separate challenge
The native platform has unique challenges and needed more time and effort to figure out across iOS and Android for all Intuit apps. This is something that was ignored at the start and became a necessity to update and maintain separate guidelines.
Building influence and alignment with PM and Dev teams was crucial
UI visual refresh was never considered an important change but a nice to have update for many quarters, I worked with the design director and team leads to ensure the new library work was used for all new implementations and was able to align with PM and Dev teams to implement this work which will go live in September 2024.