Heuristic and accessibility audits of the MCD tool

PwC. 2025

BIG WINS on a small budget: Transforming a noisy compliance dashboard into a usable, accessible exp

The My Compliance Dashboard (MCD) is PwC's central compliance hub used by thousands of employees and contractors across service lines to complete mandatory requirements. As the firm's single source of truth for compliance, it plays a crucial role in keeping both people and the business audit-ready.

This case study focuses on the Tasks landing page — the entry point where users view the status across all assigned tasks and take action. Despite being critical, feedback revealed consistent issues:

Users struggled to prioritize tasks and missed deadlines, leading to costly penalties
The interface often failed to drive task completion, requiring repeated follow-ups
The interface felt noisy and was inaccessible

The Constraints & approach

With limited budget for user research, UX focused on high-impact evaluative methods — conducting a heuristic evaluation and accessibility audit to uncover usability gaps, followed by hypothesis validation through quick internal feedback loops.

The outcome

95% of tasks completed on time post redesign
100% accessibility compliance achieved, fully aligned with PwC's brand and WCAG standards
Responsive layout optimized for tablet, laptop and desktop experiences
Scalable design that supports future compliance tasks and categories without additional redesign effort

THE RESEARCH

The existing landing page presents tasks within two distinct sections: 'Current' and 'Completed.'
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The 'Current' tab displays all active items, including assigned compliance tasks, as well as those that are on-hold or upcoming.
The right panel provides access to self-initiated actions, allowing users to start new workflows independent of their assigned compliance duties.

My heuristic evaluation of the existing layout revealed significant usability and aesthetic issues.

Key findings from heuristic evaluation

1. The interface relies on abstract, proprietary icons to differentiate between task categories, combined with jargon-filled task names. Poor recognition obscures task importance, leading users to frequently ignore or delay completion

2. The system doesn't provide feedback on task priority and status. This is most evident when tasks are returned by the back office, leaving users without critical context or the reason for the return
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Solution recommended:
-> Add task status to build user trust by enhancing system transparency
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-> When a task is returned, provide an explicit reason for the return. This empowers users to quickly correct the issue, significantly reducing frustration
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-> Introduce system-driven prioritization to guide user focus and motivate timely completion

3. The right panel competes for attention with the table, creating visual overload. It's not always clear if right side is secondary or a separate workflow.

Solution recommended:
-> To create a clear distinction between the main panel and the right panel, we are considering two architectural approaches:
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1. An integrated layout where the right panel tasks are placed in a visually distinct section within the main content area

2. A navigational separation that moves the right panel tasks to a separate page or view, accessible via a left navigation menu.
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4. The 'Completed' tab housed all historical tasks, leading to slow load times, poor findability, and high storage costs. This was done to give users access to old documents.

‍Solution recommended:
-> We addressed the core user need by creating a dedicated "My Documents" repository in the left navigation. The 'Completed' tab has been streamlined to show only tasks from the past year.‍

Key findings from accessibility audit

1. Keyboard navigation is inconsistent. Focus order is not predictable.

2. Many icons and logo have missing alternative text

3. Not fully responsive in tablet and mobile screens

THE DESIGN STRATEGY

1. Establishing clarity with task status indicators

Steps

Before: Action button only

After: Task status added

New task assigned

Start

New

Task in progress

Continue

In progress

Task returned for rework

Start

Returned

Task on hold (backoffice)

View

In review

Scheduled for future

View

Upcoming

Following business input, only high-priority tasks will be explicitly marked as 'High'.

2. Establishing metrics for evaluation

To ensure the redesigned dashboard met clear usability goals, we introduced a new set of evaluation metrics that had not been applied to the previous design. These metrics helped us quantify and validate improvements in both usability and aesthetics.The dashboard was evaluated against five key metrics that matter most to both business and users:
‍Speed, Clarity, Simplicity, Understandability, and Scalability.

THE ui layout

We explored existing layouts within the PwC ecosystem to design solutions that feel familiar and maintain visual consistency.

Based on the task states and their associated actions, here is a logical grouping using only three colors:

Color 1: Blue (Actionable like New, In progress)
Color 2: Red (Requires attention like Returned)
Color 3: Grey (Informational/ No action required like In review and Upcoming)
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The final design achieved all usability goals:

THE ACCESSIBILITY GOALS

I created a developer handoff with a curated list of accessibility notes that will help ensure that compliance dashboard meets WCAG 2.2 AA standards on desktop and tablet.

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