Pallo: Concept to Launch
10xDesign's innovation designer, Aishley, worked with the three Pallo founders to figure out the product in the very early stages. This process was chaotic but very fulfilling for the designer and the Pallo team. The following case study is written by Aishley.
Project Overview
I started with Pallo just after they had started raising their first round. The team wanted to create the easiest tax app for freelancers. They had seen the impact of such a product in New Zealand and the UK and wanted to replicate that in the US. I worked with the team to figure out the basic concept of the app and then we dove deep into figuring out the key flows.
Pallo's Value Proposition
The everything tax app for all freelancers in the United States. From web designers to taxi drivers, the app serves as a financial crutch for all of them.
Our role
My role was to work alongside the team to take their ideas and turn them into tangible screens that could give us more insight into the UX we wanted to build. We took the concepts from this exercise and weaved them into an app that flowed seamlessly across flows. We also had an important task of making sure our product was AI enabled, the Pallo team was closely following the AI advancements even in early 2021 so we worked with AI before it was cool!
The Process
We use a simple 3-step process for all our work. You can read more about it here.
Big Picture
We wanted to create a product that was simple and worked seamlessly for all freelancer types. Intuit was already offering a pretty popular tax product but it felt like a legacy application. Our focus was sharply on freelancers of all kinds.
Tax is a stressful activity for many freelancers and sole traders. We wanted to design something that supported the freelancer with their finances throughout the year rather than just at the end.
Insights
As a freelancer myself who had trouble with taxing in the past. I knew what my issues were and what other freelancers struggled with too.
Freelancers liked transparency. Regular updates and reminders. As well as ease to find and access information.
After doing a deep dive into the competitor's products. We realised that a lot of tax products were very information intense and heavy. Although, all of the information was necessary - it didn't have to be squeezed in to create a busy UI. So, we wanted to focus on an information architecture that was freelancer friendly and that could evolve as per the user's needs.
Design Solution
Given the goal and the insights we decided that there were a few must haves in our solution.
Regular reminders and updates would allow us to take away some of the stress from the whole process.
Clear UI indication of what information is stored where. Separate tabs for things like expenses and tax history.
We had to allow for customization features, ability to maintain multiple bank accounts and have freelancer specific tools to maintain a friendly information architecture.
Our onboarding had to be clearly defined so that we could customize the UI and maintain an information architecture that fits the freelancer type.
The Result
We designed a product that was simple and easy to get around. We followed patterns from popular open banking apps like Monzo since there was an overlap in the users we were targeting. We also explored many AI quirks that eventually made it to the current version of Pallo.
Pallo Onboarding Journey
Tax, Invoices, Mileage flow pages
Dashboard and Reminders
Project Status
Since, we worked with Pallo. They have gone on to raise a seed round and launched their app in 2022 and has become an instant favorite among freelancers and early adopters. There is a lot of praise for the product and the UI of the app. You can download the app here.
Design Sprint
We have carefully designed a process that works best for early stage tech startups. We run a 4 week sprint/accelerator to design the next phase of your app.
$10k-15k
for 4-6 weeks
Get in touch

What is a design sprint?

Design sprints are an intense time based process where user-centered teams tackle design problems. Our version of this is a 4 week sprint where we help you solve business and product problems through design.

What can you deliver in 4 weeks?

In the past, we have delivered end to end designs in this period. We can take a concept or an idea to a first version with flows that is ready to build. We can take your current product and build out the next phase with cleaner design and better flows. We can take your current design workflow and improve it through a design system and design tokens.

How do revisions work?

We are open to feedback and work closely with you and your team. We are happy to accommodate for revisions as long as they are reasonable.

What is the payment schedule?

50% upfront, 50% on final delivery.

What if we are not happy with the work?

We will do our best to make sure you get your money's worth for working with us. We have always enjoyed working with startups because they are exciting, we buy into your vision and help you create a better product!

Notion + Figjam
For Strategy
Figma
For Design & Delivery
Slack
For Communication