Could TurboTax solve for financial health, not just tax season?

TurboTax Canada was losing market share to a free competitor offering a simplified filing experience. Rather than compete on price or feature parity, we explored a longer-term question: how might TurboTax's verified financial data solve meaningful financial problems beyond tax season?

This generative research initiative reframed a market threat into a strategic opportunity rooted in data, not features.

• Business problem A free competitor was redefining tax filing for simple returns, driving year-over-year market share loss. TurboTax needed alternative paths to monetization beyond filing fees.
• Customer problem For many users, taxes are only one moment in an ongoing financial story. We needed to understand:
  • Where do financial pain points persist year-round?
  • Where is TurboTax uniquely positioned to help?

Self-employed Canadians navigating complex financial lives.

Freelancers, contractors, and sole proprietors managing non-standard income without a T4.

• High financial anxiety around mortgage and loan approvals
• Disproportionate difficulty accessing credit despite stable income
• Repeatedly stressful mortgage and loan approval experiences
• Strong overlap with TurboTax's existing data coverage

We used secondary research to identify home ownership as the highest-stakes financial pain point for this segment, then screened participants through a survey to ensure we were talking to people actively navigating that experience.

Product Designer by title; Research Lead in practice.

• Secondary (landscape) research
• Generative user interviews
• Stakeholder workshops
• Insight synthesis and executive storytelling

I operated at the intersection of design thinking and research rigor.

• 6-month exploratory mandate with no predefined problem
• Lean budget: small samples, fast cycles
• Focus on directional insight, not validation
• Emphasis on concepts over high-fidelity design

Three phases, each one narrowing the question.

Phase 01 / Landscape Research

Landscape research that aligned the team and focused the inquiry.

Before talking to users, I grounded the team in the broader Canadian financial health landscape by examining research on debt, financial anxiety, and the barriers Canadians face around loan and mortgage approvals.

Two things happened: the team aligned around a shared starting point for the first time. And one signal kept appearing: self-employed Canadians faced disproportionate difficulty accessing credit through traditional institutions, not because of their finances, but because of how hard it was to document them.

Phase 02 / Generative Interviews

Talking to brokers changed everything we thought we knew.

We researched both sides of the same broken transaction: 6 self-employed users and 2 mortgage brokers. Users described the approval process as exhausting. Brokers were frustrated too, sending the same document checklist to every new client, every time.

The real problem was not documentation. It was a workflow no one owned, and TurboTax's verified data could dissolve it for both parties.

Concept testing session with a self-employed Canadian participant

Phase 03 / Concept Testing

We tested the value proposition from both sides of the transaction.

Two low-fidelity prototypes: a self-employed user experience for preparing verified financial data, and a broker-side view for receiving standardized, trusted information. Testing both sides ensured the value proposition worked across the entire system, not just for one persona.

• Strong resonance on both sides of the transaction
• Confirmed that this friction was real, costly, and underserved
• Users were open to sharing data if the value was clear and trust was earned

DocuGather: a concept for streamlining document sharing between self-employed users and mortgage brokers

We did not ship a product. That was a deliberate research outcome.

The problem was real and users wanted it solved, but the economics did not support building it at that time. Leadership made the call not to proceed. The more durable outcome was not a feature. It was a change in how the team thought.

Stakeholders who came in focused on competing with a free tool left asking a different question: what else could TurboTax's data ecosystem unlock for users across their financial lives? That reframe opened the door to exploring financial partnerships beyond tax filing.

Product teams were making decisions without a complete picture of the customer journey.

As NetSuite product teams moved quickly to meet AI-first mandates, work increasingly shifted toward feature-led delivery. In a complex ERP environment spanning four value streams, research was often reactive and scoped to isolated business goals.

Without a shared understanding of customers' end-to-end processes, teams risked duplicating effort, missing gaps, and solving local problems without seeing the full system. This initiative introduced a shared journey map to create alignment, surface gaps, and reposition research as a strategic partner.

How might research help teams see the forest for the trees and operate from a shared understanding of the customer journey?

• Business problem
  • AI-first mandates prioritized feature delivery over validated problems
  • Product teams were siloed across value streams
  • Ownership overlap and gaps were difficult to see
  • Work risked duplication and misalignment
• Research problem
  • No shared view of the end-to-end customer journey
  • Research was largely reactive and request-driven
  • Lack of a common foundation limited strategic impact

Designed for a global, distributed team.

The map surfaced what nobody had been able to say out loud.

A shared view that created alignment.

In a globally distributed organization, the biggest research risk is not poor methodology. It is research that never gets used.

Oracle NetSuite product teams span the Americas and EMEA. As a fully remote UX Researcher working across time zones and siloed value streams, I treat research as connective tissue: a shared foundation that keeps teams aligned, not a black box that produces reports.

In large, distributed enterprises, research often becomes transactional. Requests go in. Reports come out. Discovery gets lost in translation. Teams that are not part of the process are unlikely to act on the findings.

Three principles that guide how I work.

From kickoff to delivery, designed for global participation.

Phase 01 / Planning and Alignment

Aligning before a single question is written.

Projects begin with a collaborative FigJam kickoff. Teams co-frame the problem using structured activities including weighted voting to prioritize open questions and align on success criteria.

Discussion guides are co-authored with PMs and designers during working sessions, not handed off as finished documents. I use AI to generate draft questions and frameworks in advance so sessions start with a concrete baseline rather than a blank page.

Research plan — goals, assumptions, and method documented before fieldwork begins

Phase 02 / Fieldwork

Designed for global participation.

One week before interviews begin, I run a pilot session with a subject matter expert. The full team is invited to observe. Live observers are capped to protect the participant experience.

For team members with time zone conflicts, I include an async notes column so they can review recordings and contribute insights later. Nobody misses out because of where they are located.

Session note-taking board — async columns allow distributed team members to contribute regardless of time zone

Phase 03 / Synthesis

Making sense of it together.

I facilitate collaborative synthesis sessions where teams review recordings and build themes collectively. When stakeholders participate in interpretation, they develop shared ownership of what comes next.

I use AI where it accelerates: drafting, organizing, pressure-testing. I rely on human judgment where it matters most: interpreting, facilitating, deciding what the findings actually mean.

Phase 04 / Delivery

Research that gets used.

Findings are designed to be skimmed, shared, and acted on. Async video walkthroughs let stakeholders absorb research on their own schedule and arrive at discussions with sharper questions.

Delivery always connects insights to strategy. The goal is not to present findings, but to make the implications explicit for roadmap decisions and design direction.

From black box to strategic partner.