New Product Innovation & Development
UX Case Study
Product Liability is an area of law that primarily deals with people getting unduly injured by a device. The team and I started with a Design Sprint process and released a user-tested new product in less than two years.
Project Brief
Project Type
Project Type
Project Type
Online Area of Law Research Application -Conception, Planning, Design, Release
Timeline
Project Type
Project Type
December 2018 - June 2020 Release
Research Methods
Research Methods
Research Methods
Concept Test, Survey, Click Tests,
Dashboard Card Sort - Contextual Inquiry, Prototype Evaluation, Usability Tests, IA studies, Betas, Dot Test
My Contribution
Research Methods
Research Methods
Managed and lead UX team, Design Sprint facilitator, Designated Whiteboard Sketcher, Lead Designer, Wireframing, Prototyping, Component Designer / Design System, Patent Pending Search System Co-Inventor, User Interviews contributor
Team
I had the pleasure to work with a wonderful team of UX professionals and a great Product Owner and Product Manager.
2 UX Researchers: Lead and Associate
1 Visual Designer
2 UX Designers: Snr. Designer and Associate
2 Product Managers: External & Internal
The PLN innovation team. Image does not include the engineering, marketing, sales and management.
Before the Design Sprint
Market Research
LexisNexis provides research and insights for students, businesses, and legal professionals. Product Liability is an area of law that primarily deals with people getting injured by a device. According to our early market research product liability cases are some of the largest cost with the highest verdicts and settlements in the US. This process is different from other areas of law in that it requires a deeper dive into more document types including product recalls, statutes, laws, industry regulations, company information, expert witnesses testimonies, verdict and settlement data as well as cited case law opinions published by courts.
Product Liability Attorneys use these documents and data to perform two basic jobs;
1. Assess "Should I take this case? "
2. Build a winning case.
Early Market research shown in the Design Sprint. More on Design Sprints below.
The Design Sprint
Additional Information
Additional Information
I love Design Sprints! If you want to test out a new innovative service, or product or test a new business idea I can't recommend enough using this lean design thinking method to test your next big idea!
At this point in the process, we didn't have a budget sign-off for this new product from our company. So, doing a design sprint would refine the product concept and test the concept with potential users. Or at least get us closer to those goals.
The design sprint brought a cross-silo team together to create a testable solution in one week. This was for the most part a traditional design sprint, but compressed into four days. This type of sprint is good if you have a UX team that can work on the high-fidelity prototype as well as do more formal UX research. It frees up one day for the business team and allows the UX team to go deeper into developing the prototype and doing more user testing.
For our sprint, some exercises were added to the traditional exercises, including lean business canvas and recorded user interviews. (More info about the lean business canvas below.) We kept most of the traditional exercises; e.g. mapping the problem, research review, journey mapping, inspiration, solution sketching, storyboards, and group voting. For more info on Design Sprints see GV.com or thesprintbook.com.
I refer back to the Design Sprint methodology throughout my process.
Learn More
If you are new to the Design Sprint concept I recommend buying the book by Jake Knapp, Sprint: How to Solve Big Problems and Test New Ideas in Just Five Days. (Using this link helps me pay for my website.)
If you aren't the reading type, I recommend the videos by Jake Knapp and AJ&Smart who work with Jake and are constantly refining how to make Sprints even better.
If you want to jump into a virtual sprint I would recommend MIRO or MURAL online collaborative whiteboard applications. Then look for Design Sprint templates. I love this process. I love Design Sprints! If you want to test out a new innovative service, or product or test a new business idea I can't recommend enough using this lean design thinking method to test your next big idea!
Design Sprint
Issues to Overcome
- Some Product Liability attorneys are specialists in one product area, but most have to learn new products, companies, regulations, statutes, and laws for each case. This means ramp-up is slower and therefore the time investment for each case is much greater than some other areas of law.
- LexisNexis has great research resources but sometimes the user has to already know what to look for to find it. Or worse, they don't know it exists in the system at all. How could we take all the data and document types buried in the system and bubble these hidden 'diamonds' to the top?
- LN had an existing Navigator product in the Medical Malpractice area of law. MedMalNav sold well, and was popular for its data, but not for its structure. It was built around a series of questions that were smartly scripted but annoyed the users because they took a painfully long time to go through. They just wanted to get to the data quickly!
- The current mental model for LN products was Search > Get Results > Skim 100's of documents > Add Filters > possibly get ZERO results > remove filters and try again. Sometimes users would go back to large treatises to find links or resort to going out of the platform to use Google to find where to start. Could we provide a faster way for the user to get only positive results without interrupting their flow? Or leaving the LN environment?
Lean Business Canvas filled out by collaborative group during Design Sprint with SME input.
Don't be afraid to forge new ground
Dashboard Card Sort
The most successful research method was one we developed ourselves; a combination of card sort and visualization of that data found through wireframing dashboard components. It was very important to match the profile user needs to the order of that data on a dashboard. To do this we designed high-level cards which could be moved onto a blank dashboard canvas by the user during moderated testing. We prompted users to think in terms of the data they needed first. This allowed the users to design the dashboard for us. Though the results were not unanimous, we discovered which cards needed more details, which were superfluous, and which were low impact. Using this method we also teased out two jobs to be done from the users; 1) Should I take this case 2) How do I win the case I have taken?
Overall this new method was a success and we continued to use and refine it for other products in the future. The method can be adapted into a click test as well to scale the research and get greater statistical significance. Credit for developing this method goes to Jeanette Fuccella and Thomas Ferguson.
The Dashboard Card Sort Method process can be done by sharing the UX researchers screen.
Iterating on the Solution
Landing Page Search
Users have been trained by Google to see the power of natural language results with one large search bar. But in our system for this area of law, the best results were narrowed by our high-level content types and relevant filters to those categories. So the challenge is directing the users to create better searches to get the best results.
The landing page had to introduce the concept of entering the search in separate fields so the system could provide more articulated results. We iterated on several designs to guide the users as much as possible without feeling like we were pinning them in. These were tested in qualitative interviews.
Another challenge was informing the user that the most litigated product types had been enriched by our legal editors to provide extra benefits. Ultimately we decided less was more. These enriched categories wouldn't change the product type the users needed at this moment.
Dashboard UI
The dashboard only had a few precedents across the company's legal applications. New search filter states were created and tested with users for understanding. Dashboard cards were given identifying icons and color coding to give users clues when cards moved around based on results. Large metrics or numbers gave the users a quick digestible understanding of a broad category. We changed the paradigm to satiate their FOMO. Instead of showing as many results as possible, we showed a more controlled high-level summary.
No Fail Searching
During user interviews, we kept hearing from users about the problems of creating impactful searches. Broad results get you an understanding of the landscape, which can be valuable, but matching the case scenario gets you farther toward a winning case. The problem is detailed searches often give the user zero results without giving feedback on why it failed.
Addressing this problem we created 'No Fail Searching' which not only removes the "zero result scenario" issue but gives the user feedback on what terms were removed to get positive results. ( See Enriched Tag filters ) Users can quickly turn off or on No Fail Searching.
No Fail Searching allows the system to help the user without the user understanding the system defined hierarchy.
Enriched Filter Designs
The team created and tested variations on filter chips that informed the users that a search term was removed from the search by the system to achieve no fail results. These types of chips were used in other design libraries but not in conjunction with intelligent search systems.
We designed a multitude of designs but ultimately the design that needed the least explanation tested consistently the best. A simple strike-through showed a user the word was removed and a checkmark on hover showed they could add it back if needed. To make the solution even more effective we needed to make it smarter.
The team started enriching the results by using what we had learned from the data. We added custom filters based on subject matter experts' understanding of the law and starting with the most litigated product types first. Once again we kept to the rule of creating the biggest impact for as many users as possible first. Next, we created logic around what type of keywords to remove from the user's original search that was logical for the system and the user based on data and user testing.
Unifying the Result Views
Most of the existing document results pages fit into the existing global visual style guide or system. Some results lists, pulled from other company products, had to be aligned with others to give a seamless experience. Other results views were brand new and had their own restrictions, such as the industry standards results screen.
Diving into the different content types revealed more opportunities for improving the product. Seeing the results pages side by side showed that not all views followed the global visual style, which means more work for the user in relearning for each type of results. Another opportunity was that many of the filters shown didn't relate to the content type at hand or seemed duplicative. My team and I made suggestions for future filter clean up to reduce cognitive overload.
This content type, see image to left, was from outside sources and had an additional cost. The users' pain point is that they didn't always know if the cost justified the benefit. So the challenge for the design was to give our users as much understanding of the content without showing actual samples of the copyrighted material. Basically, give the user insight and reduce risk. We achieved this by leveraging the tags to describe the content.
For more info on PLN
Press Release
Legal Tech Blog - Dewey B Strategic
Legal Tech Blog - Dewey B Strategic
Legal Tech Blog - Dewey B Strategic
Legal Tech Blog - Dewey B Strategic
Legal Tech Blog - Dewey B Strategic
Legal Tech Blog - Techlaw Crossroads
Legal Tech Blog - Techlaw Crossroads
Legal Tech Blog - Techlaw Crossroads
More info on the process.
Legal Tech Blog Article - Meet the Team: https://www.techlawcrossroads.com/2020/06/meet-the-team-behind-product-liability-navigator/
Short Promo Video
Legal Tech Blog - Techlaw Crossroads
Legal Tech Blog - Techlaw Crossroads