Method and system for reducing the presentation of less-relevant questions to users in an electronic tax return preparation interview process

A nontransitory computer-readable medium having a plurality of computer-executable instructions which, when executed by a processor, perform a method for reducing a presentation of less-relevant questions to a user of a tax return preparation system to personalize a tax return preparation interview process for the user, the instructions comprising:

• a tax return preparation engine configured to host a user interface to provide user experience elements and relevant interview questions to the user to progress the user through the tax return preparation interview process hosted by a mobile computing system of a user;
• wherein the user experience elements include graphical tiled icons that are associated with tax-related topics,
• wherein the user experience elements are selectable by the user through the user interface by moving one or more of the user experience elements from a first region in the user interface to a second region of the user interface;
• a data structure that includes questions for the tax return preparation interview process,
• wherein each question is associated with at least one of the tax-related topics, the data structure configured with questions, attributes of each question, and associated tax topics associated with a subject matter of each question;
• and
• a question relevance module configured to receive selected ones of the user experience elements,
• wherein the question relevance module is configured to determine the relevant interview questions from the questions for the tax return preparation interview process, at least partially based on the selected ones of the user experience elements, and is further configured to link individual ones of selected user experience elements as navigation elements to particular questions determined to be a high relevancy and receive a selection one of the user experience elements and responsively delivering at least one question to the user based on the selected one of the user experience elements and the navigation element.

A system for reducing a presentation of less-relevant questions to a user of a tax return preparation system to personalize a tax return preparation interview process for the user, the system comprising:

• at least one processor;
• and
• at least one memory coupled to the at least one processor, the at least one memory having stored therein instructions which, when executed by the at least one processors, perform a process for reducing a presentation of less-relevant questions to a user of a tax return preparation system to personalize a tax return preparation interview process for the user, the process including:
• providing, with a user interface hosted by a mobile computing system of a user, a number of user experience elements comprising draggable graphical tiles,
• wherein each of the number of user experience elements includes a graphical tiled representation of at least one of:
• a tax-related topic,
• a social characteristic of the user, and
• a financial characteristic of the user,
• wherein the individual ones of the number of user experience elements are selectable by the user through the user interface by the user moving individual ones of the number of user experience elements from a first region of the user interface to a second region of the user interface;
• receiving selected ones of the number of user experience elements from the user interface;
• determining a relevancy of each question of a question pool stored in a data structure configured with questions, attributes of each question, and associated tax topics associated with a subject matter of each question, the determined relevancy being at least partly based on the selected ones of the user experience elements;
• linking individual ones of the selected user experience elements as navigation elements to particular questions determined to be a high relevancy;
• prioritizing questions of the tax return preparation interview process, the determined relevancy, omitting questions of the tax preparation interview process having low relevancy to the user based on the determined relevancy;
• receiving a selection of one of the selected user experience elements, resulting in a navigation selection;
• and
• delivering relevant ones of the questions to the user through the user interface to progress the user through the tax return preparation interview process, an order of the questions being delivered being at least partly based on the navigation selection.