STEP 1: CONTEXT
What is Bullhorn Expenses?
Bullhorn sells recruiting software, one part of which is Bullhorn Expenses where job candidates submit their expense reports. These expense reports are then sent to the Bullhorn ATS for payroll admins to review on their desktop screens.
Who are the target users?
Rebecca the job candidate is the end user who submits expense reports for reimbursement
Simon the payroll administrator is the intermediary user from the recruiting agency who reviews Amanda's expense reports on behalf of her employer Tampa General Hospital
What prompted this redesign?
Both personas complained that the existing experience was overly complex and not optimized for mobile even though 55% of candidates used the mobile experience. Payroll admins also typically reviewed 40-50 expense reports a week, so we aimed to help them both save time in their busy workdays by reducing complex flows and optimizing for mobile.
STEP 3: PROTOTYPING
After gathering feedback from our usability tests, I synced with our product team to narrow down the most relevant takeaways for our designs. The following screens depict the changes we made to the experience including a new feature and fresh design components.
Pain Point #1: Receipts
Candidates typically upload one image with multiple receipts to save time, but the receipts are too blurry for payroll admins to review so they end up rejecting those expense reports
Payroll admins receive expense reports with no receipts even if they are required
New Missing Receipt Feature
Screen A addresses the first pain point of "blurry receipts" with text that clearly instructs candidates to upload one receipt per image. Screen B shows our new "Missing Receipt Declaration" feature which allows candidates to declare a missing receipt for expense reports where receipts are required, to bypass the receipt upload step.
Pain Point #2: Clarity
Editing Expense Reports
Change A increased the legibility of the expense report status by adding a border to the expense report status in accordance with the Gestalt principle of common region. Change B clarifies how individual expenses are clickable by adding elevation and a blue button with a pencil icon to indicate they are editable.
Pain Point #3: Navigation
Finding certain expense reports within a list is hard for both candidates and payroll admins alike
Once submitted, an expense report could not be edited, leading to many duplicate reports
Finding Expense Reports
Change A involved adding an "Active/Past" toggle to help filter expense reports and make it easy to search. Change B demonstrates our new feature of editing a submitted expense report to prevent duplicate reports and foster user freedom.
STEP 4: FINAL EXPERIENCE
This final experience showcases three new design components I created: "Active/Past Toggle, Status Chip and Pagination." The updated flow for each main task can be viewed below.
Create Expense Report
1. Enter expense report details
2. Add and save expense(s)
"Expense type" field triggers other fields
New "Missing Receipt Declaration" feature
New "Submit Report" confirmation pop-up
3. Submit expense report
View Expense Reports
1. Find expense reports
2. View/edit expense(s)
3. View/edit report details
Upload and View Receipts
1. Upload receipt
2. View receipt
Project Learnings:
This work culminated in presenting our results to internal leadership. Overall, it was valuable integrating user feedback into our designs, although ideally I would like to chat with our candidate end user in the future as well and examine impact via quantitative metrics more. Ultimately, this project was a great experience in owning a design from research to design and collaborating with the product team.
