Generic user personas and follow-me-homes were only scratching the surface when it came to creating customer empathy in the taxpayer world. To prevent ourselves from designing only for the San Diego bubble, we stretched our research beyond our comfortable city and hit the road (well, sky) to deeply understand people's lives and different city cultures. Enter: Stories of America, an exciting research initiative that ignited the TurboTax organization for the upcoming tax season.

 

Although a team of professional videographers were held accountable for beautifully capturing people's stories, my role in this project was more boots-on-the-ground, ethnographic guerilla-style interviews. On the agenda were three stops in three very different cities: San Antonio, Pittsburgh, and Omaha.  

 

We armed ourselves with notebooks, Starbucks gift cards, and a whole lot of passion for learning. Prior to each trip, we noted points of interest where we would be able to encounter masses of people. Anywhere from the local historic points to museums, college campuses, and parks. What we found worked out best though were Uber rides and happy hour beer gardens. After getting the hang of approaching strangers, we quickly learned ditching our notebooks and being our curious selves lent the way to deep conversations about people's hopes, dreams, and fears. Further, those who were engaged in a hands-on activity, whether it was sketching in the park or keeping an eye out on a grandchild, seemed to open up even more. By the end of our conversations, sometimes lasting almost an hour, it felt like we had known each other our whole lives. 

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Captured below are the summaries of all three cities. 

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