CLIENT: LexisNexis (LEGAL)
Achievement: UX design of an iPad app and a Windows software
CHALLENGE
A looseleaf is a type of publication commonly used in legal research. Each looseleaf is specific to an area of law. Solicitors carry them everywhere (office, clients, court, etc.) and customise them with sticky notes and annotations. They’ve been using these publications forever. The main challenge for me was to design a digital Looseleaf reader that would be better than the hardcopy, fast, user-friendly and convenient.
APPROACH
The main users are Magistrates, Barristers and Librarians. Firstly, I needed to know precisely who I was designing for in order to understand their frustrations and needs.
I started by reviewing the existing Personas created by the Customer Discovery and Insights (CDI) team. The Product Manager and I selected the primary personas to focus on.
One of our primary personas
The legal market being both new to me and complex, I began by having informal discussions with the team. Some of the Product managers used to be solicitors, therefore have the legal knowledge and have been in the user’s shoes for a few years. They were great to talk to in order to understand the habits, goals and frustrations of the users. I learnt a lot from them in a short period of time.
The next step was to actually meet our future users. I opted for a focus group approach in order to:
- understand how they use their looseleafs on a daily basis
- uncover frustrations and limitations with hardcopy
- generate feature ideas
Extract from the discussion guide for the focus group
I conducted two focus groups: two hours and 8-10 users each.
It was interesting to see that the main frustrations were:
- Carrying several Looseleafs with them all the time. They have to use a trolley because of the weight.
- Updating Looseleafs with current laws. It is a long and painful process which entails:
- ordering the updates
- waiting to receive the updates via post
- replacing the old pages with new ones
The output was a detailed list of pain points, user journeys, tasks and features.
Extract of the user journeys documentation
From there, I started to create wireframes on Balsamiq. I started with low-fidelity ones, and then moved progressively to mid-fidelity as I iterated with stakeholders, the Visual Designer and Developers.
iPad wireframes with annotations
The next step was to conduct some user testing. I ran one-on-one sessions with 7 users. These uncovered a few usability problems that we were able to fix fairly easily.
Extract from the user testing discussion guide
Finally, we did a couple of prototype demonstration to the main potential client, the NSW Government.
OUTCOME
Both products (for Laptop and iPad) were developed in a very tight timeframe (6-7 months) and the launch was a success. The NSW Government was the first client and gave us some precious feedback in the first few months after launch which allowed us to improve the product.
You can have a look at the introduction video below that was recorded for the Windows software launch: