LZ Books Launch
April - August 2023
THE CHALLENGE
Build a light-weight accounting solution that’s specifically designed for newly formed service-based businesses to secure work, get paid, organize their finances, and be ready for tax time.
ROLE
I joined after the initial research & shaping was done to refine the end-to-end experience, take features across the finish line, and contribute to the company’s new design system. As one of the two designers on the team, I was responsible for visual design definition & execution, and I owned all accounting features.
RESULTS
A new product for LegalZoom built in less than a year, 11K paid subscriptions and 5K active users within the first year, and 79K paid subscriptions as of February 2024.
Background
I was hired to join a confidential internal team to ship LZ Books as a new 0-1 product. Since LegalZoom is a market leader in helping people form their businesses, we wanted to offer a bookkeeping solution to help them run their business as well. The business goal was to offer a subscription-based product that truly provided ongoing value to small business owners.
Project Highlights
One challenge was creating designs in tandem with a design systems overhaul. We had to create new features, contribute to the new design system, and utilize new components all at the same time.
My main area of ownership was the transactions center, where customers could connect their bank, review transactions, and get insight into where their money is going.
One of the accounting features I designed was a receipt management tool for customers to digitally store receipts and match them with transactions from their bank.
Process snapshot
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I had experience working on QuickBooks, so that gave me a leg up in terms of knowing how accounting products worked, but I looked into what other products offered, and chose to follow industry standards instead of re-invent the wheel.
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Given the stage at which I joined the project, my iterations and explorations were pretty high fidelity, but they helped pressure test and push our design system.
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After launching our MVP, we spent weeks talking to customers and seeing what gaps there were in the experience. Because we were so close to customers, we shipped improvements and updates super quickly.
This is just a high level sneak peek of what my process was like during this project. I’m happy to dive into deeper detail upon request.
SKILLS TO HIGHLIGHT
Making impact quickly
Even though I had just joined the company, I was able to launch a moderately complex MVP product within 5 months. I was able to onboard fast, hit the ground running, and start designing within my first week.
Contributing to design systems
When I joined LegalZoom, they were just kicking off a visual refresh of the product, so I helped explore different visual styles, contributed new components, and pressure tested them as we were building a product from scratch.
Juggling tasks while seeing the big picture
Since there were only 2 designers working on this entire product, we each had to deliver designs for multiple features, while keeping the end-to-end experience in mind.