Expert headshots
Challenge
When a customer chooses a TurboTax expert, they're trusting a person. It's where the brand's promise becomes human. At the scale TurboTax operates, keeping thousands of expert headshots professional and on-brand is a quietly expensive logistics problem. The traditional solution would have cost over $1M and taken weeks before a photo was taken.
Solution
Spring identified the right tool, designed the right experience around it, and delivered something the business made permanent. 86% of experts completed the program resulting in leadership pulling PortraitPal directly into the onboarding flow for every expert in the country.
The look
Spring provided guidelines on wardrobe and poses for the generated headshots. The goal was for the experts to have variety to chose from while still keeping the look consistent. We wanted the experts to feel that they had a choice in the headshot they chose, while maintaining a look that was on brand.
The camera was never the problem
Production wasn't failing because photographers are hard to book. The logistical upkeep of coordinating thousands of experts across the country was unsustainable. Spring's insight was to stop solving for the shoot and start solving for the expert. We created an experience that was seamless and comfortable for our experts all while capturing them in a professional light.
Built for the brand. Owned by the expert.
The hardest part of an AI headshot program is trust. Experts needed to feel like the output actually looked like them, not a polished approximation or a brand asset wearing their face. So Spring designed the experience around expert ownership from the start. Experts loaded their own photos, reviewed multiple outputs, and chose the one that felt most like them. The brand standards were Spring's but the final call was always our experts.
That balance is what made it land. The headshots were on-brand enough to run in paid search and Local Services Ads. Plus, they were ownable enough that experts used them on LinkedIn, business cards, and their own marketing materials. The program is now expanding from 3,500 experts to 6,000. It didn't get absorbed into the core product because the technology was impressive. It got there because the experience worked.
“WOW. Thank you!”
Fabiola, Tax Expert
Impact
Full overview
Capturing thousands of expert portraits across 50 locations, on a schedule, in the right outfit, for a photo they may or may not like, is an experience problem disguised as a logistics problem. Spring's insight was to stop solving for the shoot and start solving for the expert. There was a second layer of risk too: AI headshot tools aren't new, and the failure modes are well known. Experts needed to trust that the output would still look like them. Not a polished stranger or an AI-smoothed approximation, but a recognizable professional version of the person their customers would actually meet. A tool that drifted too far from reality would undermine the exact trust TurboTax was trying to build.
Spring identified and brought in Portrait Pal, an AI headshot platform purpose-built for professional environments. It could be calibrated to TurboTax's brand standards and integrated cleanly into the existing infrastructure. Then Spring designed the full expert-facing experience inside Intuit's native onboarding platform. The initial launch delivered Portrait Pal access via a post-onboarding email, giving newly onboarded experts a direct path to generate their headshot immediately after completing setup.
Every design decision was oriented around a professional, brand-compliant headshot the expert would actually want to use. Spring also ran the full coordination layer. Aligning stakeholders across internal channels to connect the right systems, approvals, and distribution paths inside Intuit's infrastructure. That's the work that doesn't show up in the finished product but determines whether it ships at all.
The adoption numbers validated the approach. Leadership made the call to embed Portrait Pal directly into the onboarding flow, surfaced at exactly the moment an expert sets up their profile. It's now the standard for how TurboTax onboards every expert in the country. The program is expanding from 3,500 experts to 6,000, and expert profiles with Portrait Pal headshots show nearly 4x the CTR of those without.
This is what AI-first creative leadership looks like. It’s identifying the right tool, designing the right experience around it, delivering outcomes that change how the business operates and ensuring it ultimately serves the human need. Spring sourced it, built it, shipped it, and then made it permanent, multiplying the opportunity and impact.
Spring role
- Concept
- Creative direction
- Copy
- UX / UI
- Vendor resourcing
- Cross functional rollout
Collaborators
- PortraitPal - Platform support
Next Project
TurboTax stores