101 FORM
Redesigning of the 101 Form - Annual tax form, mandatory for every employee in the State of Israel
Class - Student project
Role - UX Researcher, UX/UI Designer
Timeline - 3 weeks
What is a 101 Form?
Mandatory form that determines the tax brackets
In Israel, every employee must fill out a tax form named 101 Form. filling out this form allows employees and pensioners to ask for benefits and tax relief from the state. The details on this form would determine how much tax every employee must pay.
Why redesign it?
In its original form it wasn’t considered from a ux perspective
The ministry of education converted this form to a digital version so their employees will be able to fill it up online. The main problem was that in the transition to digital the form wasn’t fully adapted for online. It was copied from the original paper version almost as is. In my Interviews I found out that although workers fill out this form each year, it is still frustrating and unclear each time. I took this project as an opportunity to transform this form to be clear, accessible and more user friendly - adapted to online interaction.
The process
My Process follows the Design Thinking Methodology With a few personal tweaks
Qualitative data research
Extract pain points / Interact with extreme users
I put together a questionnaire intended for employees in the Ministry of Education whom must fill out 101 form each year.
I wanted to understand their relationship with this form and extract their pain points.
I also wanted to find and Interact with extreme users like first timers, LGBTQ community, and bureaucratically challenged employees.
Main questions
Tell us about your experience using 101 Tax Form? What did you find most frustrating about the form? Overall how easy do you find filling out the form? What is your opinion about the organization of information in the form? Is the terminology throughout the form clear for you? Did you find the explanation section helpful? If you could improve one thing about the form, what would it be? Did you encounter any problems while filling out the form? if yes, tell us about them
Feedback
Information analysis gathered from interviews and questionnaires.
Main problems
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The form is loaded with sections that are not always relevant for employees.
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It speaks to them in an unfamiliar accountant office language.
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Explanation of the form is at the end when most users don't know it's there.
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There is no logic to the order of the topics.
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The accountant on the other end gets the same massy form.
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There is no option to save progress.
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Sex choice selection is generic and obsolete.
creating a problem statement
UX Problems & Solutions
PROBLEMS
SOLUTIONS
The product
Creating a new user flow
I changed the user flow and divided the questions into semantic groups. This way it makes more sense to the users. First half of the form is dedicated to personal affairs (Personal, children, spouse). Second half is dedicated to work and tax (Employment, income and credits). The new flow expose only necessary pages and information.
Prototyping
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Important note
As I learned from the research, a significant problem that needs to be addressed is that people make mistakes when filling out the form. This creates confusion with tax clerks and leads to incorrect tax coordination.
I made several changes to minimize mistakes and confusion.
Setting expectations
While in the process of filling out the original form, employees suddenly find out they need a certain document. When it happens they need to stop their interaction and come up with this document. It stops the flow, makes the process clumsy and may result in missing documents. Ultimately this may create an error in the form and lead to an incorrect tax code. There for, before starting the form, I decided to suggest users the documents they might need in order to complete the form.
Inline help
The original form offers help only at the end of the form where most people don't know it’s there.I decided to add an inline help to make the form clearer.
Summary page
When the accountant clerks get the form they see it as is, meaning that they get the form as the employee filed it. in order to find the relevant information, they need to “scan” the whole form. A summary page will make it much easier for them to find what they need, lower frustration and reduce mistakes. This summary also helps the users. They can see all the information centralized in one location, edit details, replace or add documents, email to themselves, save and exit.
More UX additions and changes
Using smart default
Some pages (Like the Children Details Page) are shown only after users answered positive on a specific question, reducing cognitive load by showing only relevant material. The same rule apply within the page where the question about child support appears only after marking yes for having a child in your custody.
Congrats notification
It’s important that the users will get a notification informing them that they successfully completed the process. It is also confirming that the work they did was saved. From there they can choose to either go to summary, email the summary or exit the form.
