SaaS UX Design Aibidia Oy · 2026

Master File Progressive Workflow

The redesign was driven by repeated signals from customer interviews, internal synthesis, the Master File Workflow PRD, and moderated prototype testing. The goal was to make complex documentation work easier to navigate, easier to review, and easier to complete with confidence.

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Problem

Master file preparation felt opaque, rigid, and difficult for new users to complete end to end.

Approach

Introduce a progressive workflow, clearer navigation, progress states, flexible chapter descriptions and modified data points.

Evidence

Research inputs + competitor feedback + User Maze validation on the prototype.

My Role

UX Research · Interaction Design · Prototyping · Usability Testing

Context

Why this redesign mattered

The starting point

Master file creation was spread across multiple parts of TPDoc rather than one coherent journey. New users found it difficult to understand what had to be completed and in what order. The existing Dox42-based solution was inflexible and slower. The business expectation was that customers would start delivering master files to tax jurisdictions from around Q2 next year, increasing urgency.

Design objective

Turn a scattered preparation flow into a progressive workflow aligned to the final document structure. Improve visibility of organisational information, chapter order, and completion status. Reduce support dependency by making the workflow more self-explanatory. Lay the foundation for a cleaner Aspose-based generation experience.

Outcome sought: a more predictable, transparent, and user-centred documentation experience that more customers can complete inside TPDoc.

Research

What users were struggling with

Across customer interviews and internal synthesis, the same issues appeared repeatedly: unclear navigation, weak change visibility, too much manual coordination, and limited flexibility once the document needed review or tailoring.

Unclear where to edit or go next

Participants described not knowing where to edit content, where a change would appear, or how the workflow was supposed to move forward.

Poor review and change visibility

Users wanted clearer history, clearer audit trails, and better visibility of who changed what and when.

Heavy email-based collaboration

Review often happened outside the product through email and shared files rather than inside a connected workflow.

Rigid document structure

Internal and competitor synthesis highlighted a need for more flexible chapter structure and fewer post-generation edits.

Too much back-and-forth

Teams lacked centralized workflow management, ownership clarity, and progress signals, leading to manual coordination.

Need for simpler language and guidance

Users asked for a more approachable experience, especially for people who are not deep TPDoc experts.

"Couldn't find the text where to edit in the tool. Lack of knowledge about tool's logic."

— Interview insight (Scania)

"Reports are drafted in the tool, exported as Word files, manually reviewed across multiple levels (team, business, audit), and changes tracked offline (e.g., OneDrive, Excel)."

— Interview insight (Dyson)

"It was quite hard to understand where to go…Should be easy language."

— Interview insight (Viega)

Solution

What the redesign introduced

The concept moved TPDoc from fragmented navigation to a progressive workflow. The new interaction model surfaces the right chapter at the right time, while still giving experienced users shortcuts and control.

Dedicated entry point

The new Master File Workflow sits as its own entry in sidebar navigation, making the start of the journey easier to find. Hovering over it users can jump straight to a chapter without entering sequentially first.

Preview & Review Document

Reviewing the generated document can now be done within the tool, ensuring users do not have to communicate back and forth outside the tool.

Guided top navigation bar

A navigation bar mirrors the structure of the output document and makes section relationships visible at a glance.

Progress and state awareness

Previous/Next actions, "mark as complete", and an in-progress indicator help users understand status and keep moving.

Navigation

NAVIGATION

Access the Master File Workflow

The new Master File workflow is accessed directly from the sidebar navigation in TPDoc under the Entity Data section.
Navigate to "Master File Workflow" in the sidebar to enter the new guided experience. The entry is clearly separated from other entity and policy sections for quick identification.
Hovering over the Master File Workflow menu item reveals a flyout panel, allowing users to jump directly to a specific tab or step such as Group Details, Supply Chains, Intangible Assets, or Preview & Download without entering the workflow sequentially first.

Workflow navigation: The workflow navigation bar gives both a sequential path and direct section access, which responds to feedback about not knowing where to go next.

Content Model

Making chapters easier to complete and easier to tailor

The redesigned flow was not only about navigation. It also added more room for narrative context inside chapters, helping teams capture information that does not fit neatly into rigid structured fields.

What was addressed

Rigid, hard-to-adjust structures that forced manual clean-up after generation. A lack of narrative room for explaining nuances, jurisdictional context, or supporting detail. An output workflow that felt closer to data entry than documentation authoring.

What changed in the concept

Every chapter except Abbreviations and Definitions includes a dedicated description area. The description area supports long-form writing, images, footnotes, and tables through a rich-text editor. Descriptions are enabled by default but can be turned off when they are not needed.

This direction aligns closely with external feedback asking for more flexible structure and easier in-tool review before finalizing documents.

Validation

What usability testing showed

A Maze prototype test with five participants was used to validate whether the proposed workflow made key actions easier to find and complete.

What worked

Participants completed both core tasks successfully. Descriptive buttons and clearer structure were explicitly called out as positive. One participant highlighted "I previously reviewed the word, but knowing this makes it even easier"

What changed in the concept

The second task experienced a 34% misclick rate despite all participants completing it, indicating a need for a clearer instructions and better visualization. A participant asked for "visualising the whole workflow", reinforcing the need for stronger overview.

Impact

Key highlights

The Master File Workflow redesign helped transform a fragmented documentation process into a more structured, guided, and usable experience for TPDoc users.

Clearer workflow

Users can move through documentation in a more structured way instead of navigating disconnected sections.

Better orientation

Navigation, progress states, and chapter visibility reduced ambiguity around where to go and what to complete.

More flexible authoring

Rich-text chapter descriptions gave users more room to document context beyond rigid form fields.

Validated early

Usability testing showed 100% task success across key flows and an 8.8/10 ease-of-use score.

Strong early reception

Internal and beta feedback confirmed that the workflow felt clearer, easier to follow, and more intuitive.

Post-Launch

Post-launch & Next Iterations

After internal release and beta rollout, the response was strongly positive — but a few useful improvements emerged.

What we learned

Abbreviations and Definitions may belong later in the workflow, since users often complete it last in practice. Group Details may work better as the landing page, since it feels like a more natural starting point. A few copy and empty-state refinements were identified, but overall feedback was very positive.

Next iteration

The biggest follow-up opportunity is improving the preview experience. Today, users can review the output, but they can't jump directly from preview content back to the source input. The next iteration could introduce HTML-based preview, direct navigation to source data, commenting and review, stronger collaboration workflows. This would turn preview from a static output into a more useful review and collaboration layer.

Conclusion

This project was about making a complex compliance workflow feel clearer, more structured, and easier to complete. The redesign addressed a real usability problem: users didn't just need document generation, they needed better guidance, visibility, and confidence throughout the process.

Research, usability testing, and post-launch feedback all pointed in the same direction: a guided workflow was the right foundation. Finally, the work opened up clear opportunities for future iteration around review, preview, and collaboration.

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