How might AI help users upload documents to cloud storage while meeting the legal requirement?
Feb 2022 - May 2022
Money Forward is a leading fintech company in Japan that provides business and personal financial management software.
I began my product design journey here, starting by designing very small things such as empty states to assist the main designer, and eventually led the design of new features and experiences, including a new AI-powered file upload experience for cloud storage.
What's MoneyForward Cloud Box?
Cloud Box is a document storage app that helps small business owners. It helps users to store documents such as receipts and invoices in compliance with the regulation
Context
In Japan, the previous requirement mandated storing financial records and supporting documents in paper format for 7 years. However, recent regulatory updates now permit users to store documents digitally. Yet, this advancement introduced a new requirement: users must input specific information such as transaction date, amount, and partner for each uploaded file. This manual input process added complexity for users
Assuming that users would find this manual step a burden, our team needed to add a new feature. Before my involvement, the decision has been made to integrate AI-OCR (optical character recognition) as the solution. AI-OCR recognizes characters on paper documents and exports them as editable text
Challenge
To integrate the AI-OCR seamlessly into the user's workflow
Rapidly shipping the feature within a short time — With the product market being highly competitive, it was essential for us to continually attract and retain users to gain market share. Given that none of our competitors had implemented the update, it was a perfect opportunity for us to differentiate ourselves by delivering the feature ahead of the curve
Approach
As a solo product designer working with multiple development teams, I took the following approach
Conducted quick user interviews to understand users’ workflow
Mapped ideal user journey incorporating legal requirements and a service blueprint demonstrating how each app will integrate
Designed and iterated user interface based on the journey and service blueprint created
Tested high-fi prototype with internal users
Additionally, AI-OCR was developed by a separate team to integrate seamlessly across Money Forward's platform. However, I noticed a communication gap regarding expectations for AI-OCR because we are used to working within our product team.
Recognizing that AI-OCR will be the key success element to user experience, I took the initiative to bridge communication between the two development teams. I facilitated a workshop with two teams to create a service blueprint focusing on the technical aspect and that helped the teams to gain a shared understanding of what needed to be implemented.
Outcome
During the design process, there was a change in the product manager, requiring me to take on a leadership role and drive the project forward. Despite juggling 2 other projects, I took the initiative to define the project scope and guide the team through the design process. Within 3 months, I successfully handed over the design to the development team. We were also able to successfully launch features early, gaining market share.
