From user insight to more effective period closing across government agencies
A two-month service design project for DFØ, the Norwegian Agency for Public and Financial Management — from open brief to a concept DFØ implemented the following year.
Every month, DFØ closes the accounting period for ministries and state agencies across Norway — a deadline-driven collaboration between DFØ's accountants and controllers and their customers' finance teams. The process strained both sides. I led a team of three consultants through a full service design cycle: understanding how period closing really works, locating where the collaboration breaks down, and prototyping a digital concept to fix it. DFØ used the concept to develop and implement the solution in 2024.
A monthly process held together by Excel, e-mail, and verbal agreements
DFØ provides financial and accounting services to state organizations — ministries, departments, and agencies. Monthly period closing is the most intense touchpoint: a complex sequence of manual tasks spread across spreadsheets, e-mail, and four different systems, performed under deadline pressure by people on both sides of the service.
DFØ wanted insight into how government agencies actually carry out period closing — and to explore digital solutions that could strengthen collaboration, efficiency, and service quality. The brief was deliberately open: no predefined problem, no predefined solution.
What I aimed to achieve
Two layers of interviews, one clear focus
We started wide: stakeholder interviews with domain experts and DFØ's leadership to map the whole service landscape. That led to a deliberate scoping decision — the monthly closing process stood out for its complexity and the friction in customer interactions, so we made it the focus.
Then we went deep: 10 in-depth interviews — five with DFØ controllers and mid-level managers, five with members of customers' finance teams — alongside a study of process and routine descriptions. I synthesized the material with affinity mapping, archetypes, and process maps.
The research surfaced a service that was fragile by design and demanding for both sides:
A user journey first, screens later
Before any interface work, we defined a simple user journey as the backbone of the concept. Through co-creative sessions, the team shaped a digital tool around it — making sure technical and regulatory perspectives were built in from the start, not patched on at the end.
The concept gave the journey substance — a tool that would:
Killing our own concept before the client had to
Presenting the concept to Deloitte's domain experts exposed a flaw we couldn't ignore: manually tracking tasks in yet another tool would itself become a burden. Instead of defending the design, we used the critique to sharpen it — refining the idea into a digital process orchestration tool, a “digital brain” that integrates with enterprise systems, automatically guides users to the tasks that need their attention, and visualizes manual and automated work in one place.
Paper first, pixels second, technology last
We kept fidelity as low as the questions allowed. A paper prototype explored the digital components and interactions; FigJam flows stretched the concept further; a clickable Figma prototype then carried the user testing, where each round refined features and validated usability.
To make the concept actionable rather than aspirational, we evaluated orchestration technologies — including Pega Systems and Power Apps — for integrating the tool with customer applications. The final delivery paired the validated prototype with a comprehensive insight analysis and a concrete technology recommendation.
A concept DFØ chose to build
The prototype demonstrated how the tool could visualize the monthly closing process, document manual and automated tasks, and guide users in real time. The work didn't end as a slide deck: DFØ used the concept to develop and implement the solution in 2024.