Information Architecture project

From requirements to wireframes

Summary

The goal of this project was to create the design blueprints for building an expense management and reporting application.  Starting from requirements,  I created a task flow and low fidelity wireframes to cover the functionality dictated within the task flow. 

Requirements included the following:

1. Users can enter their own expenses, or other employees as well.  
2. They can enter new expenses, or edit existing, pending expenses.  
3. Existing expenses can be searched by expense number, title, or account number.  
4. Expense can be one time expenses (ending with a date that is the same day for when the expense occurred), or can be re-occurring. 
5. Supporting information in the form of a PDF document, optionally, can be uploaded.

Role

This was a solo project that I worked on to create the aritifacts below, using Visio and Axure as the tools. 

Main Task Flow

Main task flow - New Expense, and Edit Expense have separate flows

New Expense Report Task Flow

Edited Expense Report Task Flow

DESIGN PROCESS

Drop-lists will provide the majority of the input. Additionally, these input boxes have the ability for an auto complete functionality. This is in support of reducing the possibility of erroneous input. 

ASSUMPTIONS

The data behind the drop-list controls is from a database. The application pulls data from the database. This lowers the cognitive load of the user by not requiring him/her to recall values. Expenses can only be edited if the status is submitted or pending. Otherwise, it can only be viewed.

The summary will default to display the expenses of the user currently logged in, upon in initial login. The user may choose to change the summary to another employee. The filter will only show the user and the employees that he/she has entered expenses for.

Drop-list values are constrained to valid values for each of the following fields:

Employee Selection – This control also supports auto-complete

Account Number/Title – This control also supports auto-complete, with users searching on account number or account title.

Start Date – Users can enter Month/Day/Year.

End Date (optional) – expenses that do not span across several days will default to same day expenses, dated as of the start date.

Expense Type - This control also supports auto-complete

Wire frames  created to capture functionality from task flows