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Block Live Your Virtual Tax Pro

Since entering tax data is a daunting task, people prefer to rely on the expertise of tax professionals. To extend their service, H&R Block asked Artefact to create a virtual solution that provided the personalized experience of the H&R Block offices online.

Our result was Block Live—a Web application that allows users to have a personal, online, real-time tax interview with an H&R Block tax professional.

Block Live takes the best of the H&R Block’s in-person experience and leverages commonly available digital technology, such as video chat, so the user only has to conveniently answer questions and provide documents. The Tax Professional takes care of the rest.

How do we create a virtual tax filing solution that provides the same personal and supportive experience of H&R Block offices?

It’s unusual to think about filing taxes as “friendly and human,” but that’s what H&R Block stands for. Their challenge to us was to create a virtual solution that provided the same personalized experience of the H&R Block offices. The second challenge was to overcome the idea that tax software is complex and rigid so as to appear “secure” and “serious.” We needed to shift this paradigm to be in line with the H&R Block brand by recreating the in-person experience that feels easy to use and friendly, but still reliable and trustworthy. Finally, it had to be efficient with a single call to action and show how detailed tasks fit into the whole.

Highlights

Personal, high-touch experience

Block Live brings the caring guidance that users know from H&R Block offices into the convenience of their homes.

Bridges the human touch with technology

The system bridges both the advantages of the personal high-touch attention of tax professionals with the ease of the technology.

Flexibility

Takes advantage of the broadest set of consumer technology available in most households by allowing users to use any technology they have.

Ease of use

Easily upload documents securely to H&R Block Live using a scanner, camera, smart phone, or fax.

Process

Research

Conducted ethnographic research at H&R Block offices and researched competitive studies; derived customer insights and identified key interaction needs.

Exploration

Using Photoshop the team developed several concept layouts and wireframes to illustrate diverse directions for the product.

Vision video

With Final Cut Pro, HTML, and Adobe Flash, we developed a prototype and filmed a high-fidelity demo video to showcase the full experience of the product.

Final specs

We delivered a full spec in Adobe InDesign for the entire UI to the H&R Block development team.