Usability Evaluation of StudioTax

By Dengyu Liang

Introduction

Filing taxes is no stranger to most people. In addition to seeking help from tax experts and providing them with extensive personal information, many people also want to file their own taxes. At this time, they need tax filing software that allows them to file taxes quickly, has a user-friendly interface, and has full functions. 

StudioTax is one of the relatively popular tax preparation software. After more than ten years of continuous operation, StudioTax is now used by hundreds of thousands of people. As a NEIFILE-certified software, StudioTax has powerful functionality, providing flexible and extensive functionality to handle self-employment and rental income. I was particularly impressed by its comprehensive coverage of various tax scenarios, from simple to more complex ones.  The software guides users step-by-step, ensuring that all relevant deductions and credits are considered. As a long-established tax preparation software, StudioTax's functionality is time-tested, although its interface is slightly outdated. This old-fashioned interface may not offer the most intuitive user experience, and it destroys the integrity of the user experience to a certain extent.

In the next two sections, I will talk about how I evaluated and some of the usability problems encountered while conducting a heuristic evaluation and a Cognitive Walkthrough for the StudioTax software.

Evaluation Methods Used

This blog summarizes the evaluation employed heuristic assessment and cognitive walkthrough methods to meticulously examine the core processes and advanced functionalities of tax return completion within StudioTax's user interface (UI). We scrutinized the UI design for intuitive interaction and evaluated task processes for accuracy, focusing on the primary user interactions: initiating a tax return, inputting personal and financial information, detailing deductions, reviewing the summary, and final submission.

User Experience Problems and Suggestions

When people want to file taxes, they often need to prepare a lot of materials. If they seek advice from a tax expert, they'll be given a checklist, but if they want to file their own taxes, it's up to the software to guide them. Unfortunately, StudioTax does not provide such a checklist, and tax filers need to prepare all the information themselves. This also leads to a big user experience problem. The user experience problem that makes this situation even more difficult is the lengthy input mode.

Lengthy input mode

Figure 1: Step-by-step Wizard.

Once you start creating a new return, whether you're starting from scratch or reading from a previous year's return, you'll need to enter most of the information at once using StudioTax's own guidelines (Wizard). (Figure 1) In this case, if it is an old user, it is okay, they will have expectations of how many things they need to do. But newcomers, have to read through all the options and complete about 20 pages of data entry. There is no way to exit or save during this process unless they want to cancel their tax filing task. This destroys the Visibility of System Status and User control and freedom in Neilsen’s Heuristic, users cannot know what progress they are at and how much information they need to fill in until they finish everything. 

Propose solutions:

A feasible solution is to separate the input content and input. For example, Break down Personal Information, Income Details, and Deductions and Credits in different modules. This not only avoids re-entering due to incomplete information preparation but also simplifies the time for users to prepare information. They can create their personal information first, save it, and select to input their own Income or Deductions and Credits or any other necessary tax fill information. Also, break down the steps of each module and list the proportion completed, for example: we are in steps (5/7).

Mismatched Controls

Figure 2: Some problematic controls

Mismatched Controls are another user experience problem. In StudioTax, they mixed the appearance of controls (Figure 2), which led to quite bad expected errors. For example, all controls looked like they were for inputting text, but in fact, they were not. Some controls looks like text box but are actually drop-down boxes, and some control is a text box, which looks like it can be input, and the cursor can select it, but it cannot actually be edited. You need to click the button next to it to edit. The SIN number and the phone number are entered in three separate parts. However, the SIN number can automatically switch to the next input box, but the phone number cannot. You need to manually select the next input box after entering the three-dimensional number. There is also a problem with the input and switching order of names. After entering the first name, the middle name is displayed, but the last name is switched. The above situation undermines the Consistency and Standards of usability.

Propose solutions:

The use of controls needs to be thoroughly reviewed to ensure each control has a distinct appearance. For example, the option buttons of the drop-down box are displayed directly in the list instead of hiding until selected, the text box that cannot be edited is displayed with a special text color, the input boxes for phone numbers are merged, and the order of name input is re-adjusted. These practices can effectively eliminate confusion caused by mismatched controls.

Inadequate Error Messaging

Figure 3: Error message, flashing message

Wrong input prompts are also a part worth improving. For an incorrect input, StudioTax uses a frequent flashing prompt, which is not a good design. Figure 3 shows when the user tries to skip a required question, a flashing prompt appears, and for multiple errors, error prompts flash at the same time. However, there are no more detailed tips beyond that. It destroys the Aesthetic and Minimalist Design of usability and is also useless for Help and documentation.

Propose solutions:

The way to fix it is to only display the prompt without flashing, and for the first error, display the reason for the error. For example: SIN number format error, invalid address type, etc.

Outdated Terms and Confusing Icons

Figure 4: Pages to review and verify information.

Some Terms and Icons need to be changed, such as Wizard, which is a computer term used to indicate step-by-step instructions. As an old-school software, this was indeed the scene at which it was created. However, the term was not popular, and coupled with the image of a magic wand, users were often very confused about its abilities. The same problem is in the optimizer and RRSP. The two icons are equally confusing. These words and icons do not conform to the Aesthetic and Minimalist Design and Match between system and the real world of usability.

Propose solutions:

Re-adjust the use of terminology and use more understandable words, such as fill in again instead of the Wizard. Choose a more appropriate icon, for example, use the avatar of an old man instead of the picture of RRSP.

Zoom Function Issues

Figure 5: Different zoom levels will cause different results

The Zoom Issue is worth noting. Although the zoom function is provided, it is not well tested, and the content display will become incomplete except for 100% zoom (Figure 5). In addition, the zoom function will only change the size of the form without Changing the table or UI interface. it destroys the Aesthetic and Minimalist Design of usability.

Propose solutions:

The correct method is to adjust the text box's handling of scaling so that the scaling degree of the text box is consistent with the scaling degree of the forms and conduct sufficient testing to ensure that there is no occlusion under the provided scaling situation. In addition, UI following scaling is also an implementation that can be considered. The interface of StudioTax software is not large enough, and it is necessary to implement more modern scaling.

Inconsistent and Useless Help Functions

Figure 6: Different sources of help function

Because of the characteristics of tax software, it needs more detailed help functions to help user understand what they should do. Although help documentation is provided, it doesn't provide real guidance. When you click the help button, it will pop up a chm file. On the other functions, when you click the help link on the start page, it will point to the online web page, which provides the same content as the chm file. In fact, StudioTax offer more helpful video help on YouTube, but StudioTax don't mention it anywhere. Among usability principles, this violates two usability principles: Help users recognize, diagnose, and recover from errors, and Help and documentation. StudioTax needs to unify the help function they provide and give more useful information instead of having to dig through the manual.

Propose solutions:

Categorize the help provided and open the right help in the right place. Considering the offline design of the software, StudioTax should maintain offline help. The best way is to create a complete tutorial to guide users to use it correctly and fill in the information. Moreover, for the buttons on the review page, there should be more detailed descriptions or tutorials to inform users of the functions of each button.

Lack of Undo Functionality

The undo function should be a common feature to prevent erroneous operations. Unfortunately, StudioTax does not have an undo function. Users cannot make sure what they have edited, nor can they undo changes. It doesn't provide enough user control and freedom. The only thing they can rely on is the save function to return to the previous state. This issue violates the usability heuristic of User control and freedom. Therefore, it is necessary to provide an undo function and provide modification comparison.

Propose solutions:

StudioTax should provide undo and recovery functions and list the contents of each modification. The granularity does not need to be too fine, you just need to remember the content to be modified each time by running the wizard function or double-clicking to enter the modification page. This not only eliminates usability heuristic problems but also improves the Visibility of System Status, allowing users to clearly see their modification history.

Conclusion

StudioTax provides a Full-featured and affordable solution for tax filing, especially for someone with a flexible income. Despite this, the software's user interface is disappointing. Its user interface feels outdated like it hasn't been updated in decades. This does affect its usability. For new users, this is quite unacceptable. Developers need to consider providing a better user experience to improve software competitiveness. These outdated interfaces, inefficient data entry processes, inconsistent controls, and inadequate error messaging—all of which hinder usability.

References

1.      World Leaders in Research-Based User Experience NN. 10 usability heuristics for user interface design. Nielsen Norman Group. https://www.nngroup.com/articles/ten-usability-heuristics/ (accessed 18 Nov2023).

2.      StudioTax. Canadian Personal Income Tax Software. StudioTax. https://www.studiotax.com/home.html (accessed 18 Nov2023).

3.     Agency CR. Government of Canada. (CRA) - Canada.ca. 2023.https://www.canada.ca/en/revenue-agency/services/e-services/digital-services-individuals/netfile-overview.html (accessed 18 Nov2023).