Looking Into the Future:
Crafting Gusto’s First Design Vision

In January 2024, twenty members of Gusto’s Tax Credits team flew into San Francisco with one ambitious goal: to create our first-ever product design vision. Over the course of a week, we immersed ourselves in a design sprint to uncover customer perspectives and sketch an aspirational roadmap for where we wanted to invest our energy in the year ahead.

The Sprint: Ideas in Overdrive

The week was intense. Customer-facing teams kicked things off, sharing what they’d learned from countless interactions during the past tax season. Workshops followed—deep dives into product performance data, sketching sessions that bordered on chaos, and brainstorming exercises where the wildest ideas often sparked the most intriguing possibilities. By the time we wrapped up, the walls were plastered with hundreds of sticky notes, each holding a fragment of insight or inspiration.

Then, the design team got to work.

Synthesizing the Chaos

Back at our virtual desks, we dove into FigJam. At first, the sticky notes felt overwhelming—a kaleidoscope of ideas, each begging for attention. But patterns began to emerge:

• Personalizing the experience

• Simplifying navigation

• Demystifying the complexities of tax law

• And a few more surprising themes

The ideas were exciting, but we knew they wouldn’t land without a clear connection to our customers. A vision deck isn’t just a collection of cool concepts; it’s a story. And every story needs a protagonist.

Meet Julie

Enter Julie. She wasn’t real, but she could’ve been.

We based Julie on updated customer profile data, shaping her into a relatable stand-in for the small business owners we serve. Julie is the founder of RealityFlix, a scrappy startup aiming to make generative mixed reality accessible to everyone. Once a software engineer, Julie now spends her days juggling payroll, investor meetings, and keeping her burn rate in check—all the unglamorous but critical tasks of building a company.

With feedback from our customer support teams, Julie’s world took shape. She became more than a persona; she became the anchor for our vision, helping us view our product ideas through a customer-first lens.

Building the Vision

Armed with Julie’s backstory and the key themes from the sprint, we started sketching. The team pulled inspiration from unexpected places: PDF markup tools, consumer insurance apps, even multiplayer games. Each concept was a step closer to a vision that felt ambitious yet achievable.

After a week and a half, we had a draft. We brought in product leaders and cross-functional teammates to tear it apart and build it back up again. One piece of feedback stuck: the vision was too focused on a single year. We weren’t thinking big enough.

Expanding the Story

The feedback was tough but fair. Tax credits are rarely a one-and-done experience for our customers—they’re a multi-year journey. The question was, how do we tell that story without losing focus?

We debated introducing a second persona to represent renewal customers but ultimately decided to stay with Julie. Her journey evolved, showing how RealityFlix navigates the process of claiming credits year over year. It wasn’t a perfect solution, but it kept the narrative grounded and allowed us to move forward without losing momentum.

The Final Product

When we shared the 2024 Tax Credits Design Vision with the team, the response was everything we’d hoped for. Those who had been part of the process—sharing insights, sketching wild ideas, and offering tough feedback—saw their contributions reflected in the final product.

More importantly, the vision resonated because it wasn’t just about the future of our product. It was about solving real problems for real people like Julie.

The process of creating Gusto’s first product design vision was messy, collaborative, and deeply rewarding. It reminded me that the best ideas don’t come from a single person or team—they come from shared perspectives and a willingness to dig deep into the details. Looking ahead, I can’t wait to see how the vision helps shape what we build next.