Xero is a global small business accounting software platform with over 4.4 million subscribers. Globally they help small businesses, and their accounting and bookkeeping advisors, grow and thrive. Customers can automate everyday business tasks, get up-to-date financials, and run their business through better tools, information and connections, from wherever they are.
I was responsible for designing beautiful, enabling and meaningful experiences that solved genuine customer problems, working closely with Product and Engineering on med-large scale projects.
I primarily worked in Reporting at Xero as part of the Reporting & Insights team. I lead the end-to-end design process, resulting in solutions that met our customers’ needs. I undertook research and usability testing, and iterated to continuously improve and refine my designs, while adhering to Xero’s design system (XUI) and the Reporting framework. I worked closely and collaboratively with Product Managers, Engineers and other stakeholders and teams across Xero.
Xero Reporting Charts
The problem: Xero’s growth in North America depended on making reporting accessible and genuinely useful for SMB owners working independently. Customers did not just want a summary, they wanted to understand and trust the numbers in a format that felt familiar.
The challenge was reducing the effort it took to interpret reports, so customers could spot what mattered fast and then dig into the detail when they needed to.
The Outcome: Delivered a charting uplift for Xero Reporting: ~25% faster comprehension, ~35% improved clarity, and ~30% more report opens. Supporting momentum in Xero’s US growth market.
Process followed
Collaborate with cross functional teams to ensure proposed solutions balance user needs, business strategy and technical constraints
Collaborate with development teams during sprints to provide design QA and problem solve issues as they arise
Iterative design approach
Responsibilities
Advocate for design and cross-functional collaboration
Conduct research and analysis (competitors, trends, strategy, constraints)
Define and frame design problems and vision
Create design frameworks, wireframes, and models
Explore and design innovative, user-centered solutions
Prototype and test design concepts
Collaborate with designers, accessibility and content specialists
Design detailed, context-aware interfaces
Communicate designs clearly to stakeholders
Deliver thorough design specifications and handover materials to support the go to market teams
Timescales
Daily WIPs and regular presentations to the key stakeholders.
Team make up
Senior Product Designer
Senior Product Manager
Business and Data analysts
Engineering pods
Accessibility and Content Specialists
Go to market team
Design team peers
UX design delivered an interactive tree map and adaptive table interface, letting customers filter and visualize top-vendor expenses—boosting clarity, actionable insights, and faster financial decision-making.
120+ customer focused improvements, 50+ research interviews, repointed 7 M favourites and migrated 4 M sessions, enabling an intuitive reporting product that solved complex tasks and boosted customer productivity.
A best-in-class platform empowering small businesses and advisers to thrive with beautiful, easy-to-use reports and trustworthy, actionable insights that simplify compliance and foster seamless collaboration.
User-centric research defined business-owner vs accountant tasks—informing UI flows that streamline daily operations and compliance, boosting clarity, confidence, and efficiency for both user types.
Key design contributions
Reporting charting framework and generative AI research
Modernising the Reporting framework, accessible enhancements, greater flexibility and control
Generative AI across Reporting and Insights design and research projects
Participated in multiple Xero hackathons that solved key Xero feature requests for Reporting and across the product
Reporting accessibility and supporting tools, keyboard hotkeys
Mentored a Xero Design Grad in 2024 in Reporting and Insights team
Xero had two reporting systems: V1 (legacy) and V2 (modernized). Maintaining both was inefficient and costly. In 2022, Xero announced the retirement of V1 reports within a year. However, many customers were unhappy with the change — preferring the familiarity and customization of V1 — and expressed strong negative feedback.
The challenge was twofold:
Customer resistance to change due to loss of familiar features.
Business need to deprecate V1 while ensuring customer satisfaction and seamless migration.
The Solution
The team set out to:
Ensure feature parity between V1 and V2.
Release new capabilities to make V2 more compelling.
Design a frictionless migration experience.
The design-led approach was central to this success:
Worked iteratively and collaboratively across the Reporting framework and teams.
Used rapid design loops to test, validate, and refine ideas.
Grounded decisions in customer insights and usage patterns.
Design Impact
The process made a measurable difference:
120+ product improvements delivered directly from user needs.
7 million report favourites repointed and 4 million sessions moved to V2.
Conducted 50+ customer interviews to shape solutions that met real user expectations.
Assessed 1,200+ help articles to align support with the new system.
Outcomes
Despite initial resistance, the transition was smooth:
17.8 million reports run in the first week after V1 shutdown.
91 sentiment feedback items only — within normal support levels.
Daily usage by 267k organisations, showing adoption and trust.
Conclusion
The V1 Exit project turned a major customer pain point into a successful transition, thanks in large part to the adaptive, research-led design process. We helped transform customer resistance into acceptance by deeply understanding their needs and delivering a solution that exceeded expectations.
Other projects
I worked on a wide range of digital projects that included B2C and B2B applications across web and native app platforms. I was involved in all levels of product design and development from research to implementation.
Responsible for UX, Product and UI design, including improvements on existing applications and new product development. Assisting in gathering requirements to adapt products from legacy systems into the new framework and design rationale.
UX design layered tables, charts, and analytics into core reports—creating intuitive visuals, actionable insights, and seamless upgrade paths that boost customer clarity, engagement, and value.
Responsive UX design delivered seamless reporting on any device—desktop two-column dashboards to stacked mobile lists—ensuring customers enjoy intuitive navigation, consistent access, and efficient report discovery everywhere.
UX-designed WYSIWYG editor with live PDF preview, editable row headings, and clear apply/cancel controls—empowering users to customize report layouts intuitively and reliably.
UX-designed WYSIWYG layout editor with hierarchical nav, live PDF preview, and inline collapsible sections—empowering customers with intuitive report customization, control, and efficiency.
UX-designed journeys clarified personal vs. organization-wide layout workflows, letting customers create, save, and apply custom report templates with governance—improving efficiency, consistency, and control.
UX-mapped end-to-end reporting and setup workflows—defining nav, templates, and sharing steps—to streamline report creation, customization, and distribution, boosting customer efficiency and governance.
