Set the contract.
Explain the service, collect only what prepares the expert, and make the next step predictable.
Intuit / TurboTax Live / Service design / Zero to one
Designing both sides
of “talk to an expert.”
The first TurboTax Live season was one service with two products: a calm customer experience in front and a workable CPA operation behind it.
TurboTax Live / Zero to one service + TY19 evolutionOne click in front.
A complete service behind it.
A complete service behind it.
Designing the customer journey, expert workspace, and operational handoffs as one connected product.
Two experiences had to become one product.
For the customer, the proposition was simple: keep filing and bring in a credentialed expert when the question becomes too important to guess. Behind that moment, a CPA needed the right return, the right context, the right tools, and an unmistakable path to the next action.
I worked across both sides. On the consumer side, that meant entry, preparation, expert identity, live interaction, review, and the return to filing. On the expert side, I was designer #1 for the shell, look and feel, badges, boxes, and delivery kits used to stand up the first tax season.
Front stageThe customer should feel one continuous TurboTax experience.↕Back stageThe expert should receive a prepared case—not a pile of disconnected tools.
Evidence note: archived TY19 consumer, professional, and full-service end-to-end source files are shown alongside public launch material. Working boards are selectively enlarged so the product decisions remain readable without reproducing internal contact details.
Map the service before polishing the screens.
The experience crossed onboarding, the live tax workflow, and the return to filing. A single end-to-end board made those dependencies visible: what the customer saw, what the expert needed, and what the system had to preserve between them.
Source design file
One board. The whole service.
The source file connects consumer entry, expert preparation, SmartLook, review, filing, and offboarding in one operating view.
Protect continuity.
Move through intake, SmartLook, review, and live help without dropping the customer’s context.
Return with a clear next step.
Close the expert moment, preserve the decision, and hand control back to the customer.
Stay in the flow. Bring expertise to the question.
The customer experience could not feel like a support detour. The expert had to arrive inside the filing moment, understand where the customer was, and guide without taking over the screen.
01 / Set expectationMake expertise visible early.
02 / Establish trustIntroduce the person, not a support queue.
03 / Stay in contextKeep help beside the tax decision.
Three moments—not a wall of thumbnails.
The working board held the whole sequence. These close-ups show the decisions that mattered: set an expectation, introduce a credible expert, and keep help attached to the filing step.
An expert inside the product.
The launch image makes the core interaction legible: expert video sits over the return so the customer can keep working in context.
View public sourcePoint to the answer.
Screen annotation turned “the box below that question” into a precise shared reference on mobile.
View public sourceReach the edge case.
The customer is already inside a real return—not browsing a help center.
Ask without leaving.
Expert help appears as part of the current step.
See who arrived.
Credentials, role, and experience establish trust before the answer.
Resolve in context.
Screen sharing and annotation keep both people on the same question.
Return to filing.
The service hands the customer back to the next clear step.
Design decision
Protect continuity. Every expert moment should end by making the next customer action obvious.
Trust is a sequence of states.
SmartLook was not one floating card. It had to explain what the expert could see, establish who had joined, remain available without covering the return, and fail safely when a session could not connect.
With video / Customer view
Connected / Expert viewSource UI · contextual mockup
The customer sees a person. The expert sees a controlled session.
Video keeps the customer-facing experience human. The expert-side panel keeps connection status, customer identity, and the exit path visible without taking over the case workspace.
Use a shared code.
The session begins with a customer-visible code rather than a hidden connection.
Name the connection.
The panel confirms who is connected and keeps the disconnect behavior explicit.
Fail in place.
A retry state preserves the code and the customer context instead of forcing a restart.
Say what is shared.
Consent copy states that the expert can see the screen—but not the customer.
Show who joined.
Name, credential, tenure, and fallback rules make the person behind the session legible.
Stay close. Stay out of the way.
Hover, minimize, drag, and close states preserve access without covering the tax work.
Turn a handful of links into a place to work.
The first expert experience began as hyperlinks into third-party products. That was enough to prove connectivity, but not enough to support a tax professional through a live customer moment. The design task was to create a clear shell around tools we did not own.
Open customer return ↗Start video session ↗Search tax guidance ↗Update case notes ↗
The expert had to remember the order, rebuild context, and track state across windows.
CustomerReturnLive sessionNext action
The shell made the workflow visible while third-party tools continued doing their specialized jobs underneath.
Archived source
The proposed shell organized the case around customer context, document readiness, expert tasks, client actions, and the supporting team.
Archived source
Documents open beside the return, keeping categorization and application attached to the active case instead of another browser tab.
Source: Full Service End-to-End / 3rd Peak · August 2019. These are archived working prototypes from the supplied Sketch file—not reconstructed production screens.
Design the handoff, not just each screen.
Every visible customer step created a matching operational requirement. Mapping them together kept the consumer promise honest and made gaps appear early—before tax season made them expensive.
The shell separated persistent navigation and utilities from tool-specific panels, free content regions, and the customer workspace.
The inventory made integration status visible and tested every feature against a shared rule: solve the core need, stay flexible, and favor quality over quantity.
Source: Pro Portal Core — Structure and Features · January 14, 2019. Both artifacts are marked work in progress.
CustomerFront stageLine of visibilityBack stageSupport systems
Hits a questionRequests helpMeets expertResolves the issueContinues filing
Contextual entryMatch + credentialsVideo + annotationConfirmationReturn to flow
Context packageQueue + availabilityReturn + guidanceCase noteSession close
Trigger logicRoutingThird-party toolsCase recordAudit trail
Every week ended with something experts could react to.
We used weekly roundtables to keep the MVP close to real practice. Wireframes and working features went in front of CPAs every week. The conversation was specific: What would you look for first? What state is missing? What could be misread under pressure? What should never happen without a hard stop?
Frame the risk.
Choose one live-service moment and the failure we needed to prevent.
Make it tangible.
Prototype the flow, shell behavior, copy, and component states.
Put it in expert hands.
Walk practicing tax professionals through realistic cases.
Narrow the MVP.
Keep what improved comprehension; simplify or remove the rest.
What we showedWireframesNavigation modelsQueue statesLive-session controlsError and stop states
What we listened forMissing contextAmbiguous statusUnsafe actionsTool-switching frictionLanguage experts would actually use
The shell had to teach the service.
Because the workflow crossed TurboTax and third-party products, visual consistency did operational work. I established the first shell and its look and feel, then built the badges, boxes, and kit components that helped experts understand status, priority, and safe next steps.
Live nowReadyNeeds reviewClosed
Compact language made case state scannable across the shell.
Customer contextWhat the expert needs before saying hello.Required actionWhat must happen before the case can move.
Repeatable containers separated context from action.
CPA
Verified expert01 Sign in
02 Check tools
03 Set status
04 Take first case
Verified expert01 Sign in
02 Check tools
03 Set status
04 Take first case
The kit extended the product language into the expert’s first-day setup.
System principle
Badges answer “what state is this?” Boxes answer “what belongs together?” The shell answers “what do I do next?”
Build a coherent service from the tools available.
The MVP did not wait for a perfect platform. We used third-party systems for video, return access, communications, and knowledge, then designed a TurboTax Live layer that gave those tools a shared order and identity.
Navigation · context · status · next action
VideoReturn viewerPhoneGuidanceCase notes
The shell did not pretend every tool was native. It made the seams predictable enough for experts to work safely.
One service. Two working surfaces.
The consumer sees a clear invitation to connect. The CPA receives the customer context and session controls needed to respond.
The service moved from launch to meaningful volume.
The work belonged to a much larger cross-functional program. The numbers below describe the scale TurboTax Live reached and was planning for—not the isolated impact of one designer or one interface.
Milestone1,000,000TurboTax Live units
Source: internal program reporting supplied for this case study. The source deck also projected 1.5M total units and $262M in revenue. Forecasts are labeled as projections; all figures are presented as program context, not individual design attribution.
A service is only as calm as its backstage.
The customer saw a person appear at the moment they needed help. Making that feel simple required product design across two interfaces, multiple tools, expert operations, and a tax-season deadline.
The front stage earned trust because the back stage was designed to carry it.
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