JUSTICE LEAGUE
Client: Assessment Appeal Board and The Justice Lab
Role: UI Designer & UX Designer
Part of a team of 5 including: 2 Developers, an artist and another designer.
Category: Web Application
Year: 2021
MY RESPONSIBILITIES
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Analyze the documents provided by clients to find the problem;
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Create user persona and analyze user pain points;
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Create product wireframe and design high fidelity prototype;
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Present product design to the clients and gather feedback weekly;
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Validate product design by coordinating, facilitating and conducting user testing;
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planning and conducting the focus group test;
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Create, maintain and update the product design system and UI library based on clients' requests.
OVERVIEW
The Property Assessment Appeal Board and The Justice Lab approached the Centre for Digital Media in January 2021 with the opportunity to explore different ideas to address the fundamental problems accessing BC's civil justice system. The customers hope to get innovative and leading design and technology to better the users' experience on their website and resolve property owner disputes in a less complicated and more appealing process.
CHALLENGE
User experience data in the justice system shows that the vast majority of Canadians with everyday legal problems are not using our formal civil justice processes to resolve their disputes. The main reasons are that people find the formal systems too expensive, difficult to understand, and do not find them welcoming. The processes can be long, time consuming and uncertain.
SOLUTION
Our solution is a flat-style walkthrough journey in which the users can move their characters toward each stage which is shown as different signposts. The users will get the audio/video guidance in each stage by our guide character and then read the necessary written content.
They can input their data in each section and predict their chance of success at the end of the journey.
We made the process as simple as possible, having visual elements and engaging features.
SOLUTION
RESEARCH Summary and preparation
This section is the key to have a successful and deep insight discovery. Before starting the discovery phase, I took a series of steps to ensure I cover all aspects of the problem and all the necessary supporting information. To gather all the information, I conducted client interviews and field studies.
In the interviews, clients provided us with information about the logic flow they wanted for the app, and I set it as a flowchart to better understand the logic. I realized the application must get user inputs on different types of evidence and make predictions on the assumptions.
After studying the current website, I analyzed 226 cases out there on the website as well as the reason why other appeals declined.
Client interviews
Field studies
I conducted a series of steps in the discovery section using the information I gathered in the field study during the research stage. These steps included:
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Target audience
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Persona
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User journey analysis
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User flow and interactions
TARGET AUDIENCE
Main User profile – the general public:
Most users will be owners of residential properties (single family dwellings, condos, townhouses and recreational properties), who will have varying levels of comfort using computers, but we must assume some basic computer skills. Many of them will have no knowledge of the appeal steps and what is needed to present a strong case.
PERSONA
I created persona based upon my research in order to represent the different user types that might use our product. Creating persona helped me to understand users’ needs, experiences, behaviors and goals and also helped me step out of myself. These are two different types of users with different needs and goals.
Maya
Financial Advisor
Location: Dawson Creek
Goodwin
Bookseller
Location: Vancouver
USER JOURNEY MAP ANALYSIS
I mapped out the existing user journey for visualize the process that users go through in order to accomplish a goal. It helped me to know what steps users take and what feelings they have while using the product from their point of view.
USER FLOW AND INTERACTION
According to what I received from the client, I created The user flow & interaction graph which shows the main user tasks and how system responds to each question.
KEY FEATURES
I gathered the information in the research and preparation phase and conducted all the above stages (Target
audience, Persona, User journey analysis, User flow). key features included:
Easy to understand
Engaging (gamelike) user experience;
Accurate prediction
DESIGN PROCESS
After figuring out the key features, With the constraints in mind, I explored all possibilities and analyzed each of our ideas' pros and cons. Once team decided to create a Web application to take the current website to the next level, I tried to balance all the elements addressed in our problem statement.
Initial Prototypes
In the first stages, we tried to understand dashboards’ potentials which are easy to access, providing on-demand visibility and insight. Users could check progress or respond to changing conditions there, but based on our initial user test, we found that it might seem not that clear in our project as there should still be lots of information in each section, and not engaging enough as our clients’ requirements.
Using Fusion, we created several prototypes to explore radically different approaches. We considered a “science lab” metaphor, an interactive dashboard and a quest-style RPG before settling on our walk-through solution.
HIGH-FIDELITY PROTOTYPE
Once I got the low-fi sketches to where I wanted them to be, I began creating the high-fidelity wireframe/prototype in Figma.
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FEATURES
How I used data and research to improve the product
1. from our user research, I realized that during the process users do not have enough evidence or information to complete the process. They needed to exit from the system and come back again. Starting from the beginning was not pleasant for users. I mentioned this problem to the team and my solution was: Each unique session has a reference code. If users leave, they can return and pick up where they left of.
2. Most users wanted to have a record of the result. I provided both digital and paper based report option for users. Users can print a report with all the information they accumulated to evaluate their assessment.
USER TEST RESULT
· We realized that we need to eliminate the "prediction" button at the first stages as it was confusing for some users to click it instead of the next arrow button.
· The walking pace of the character seemed slow to the users. They found it sometimes annoying, especially when you want to move back to the previous section to check or change something, so we speeded up the movement.
· Almost all users preferred to have the audio guide option in addition to the written instructions, yet be able to read every vital content to avoid missing any point. So, we included video guidance in addition to our detailed written information for each stage.
· Text font did not seem suitable for all readers, primarily the elderly demographic, so we increased the font size and added the scrolling option. This also helped us to have a coordinated interface.
· There were some unfamiliar words such as ASR stat, Taxing JRD, Taxing jurisdiction, which we added additional descriptions to make clear for new users.
· Another necessary action was adding units to each section that needs to be filled. Such as mentioning CAD $, or percentage (%) for tax rate, etc.
·The standard screen size bug in which some users could not see the complete content on the screen and our developers fixed the issue to work for the most common screen sizes.
USER JOURNEY COMPARISON
User Journey (existing website)
The user journey of the Property Assessment Appeal Board involves going through different screens of yes/no questions with little interactivity. The users can move through these questions by choosing a Yes/No answer, which will take them to another screen with a question in response to their previous choices. Alternatively, they have a roadmap that details all questions in the process that they can jump back and forth between. The user reaches the end of the journey when they see a message that speculates whether they should appeal or not based solely on the Yes/No answers they made. The users can click back to the previous questions through the roadmap to choose a different outcome.
User Journey (NEW)
In this user journey, the users will start out at the beginning of a virtual hike through a forest in British Columbia. The user can choose an avatar to represent them through this virtual hike. Then they can move the avatar freely back and forth between the different information stations they encounter on this hike (representations of different steps in the process) by using right-arrow and left-arrow buttons. In each step, they will see a panel opened where they can input different evidence (text, number, date, etc.) The journey ends with a panel that summarizes the key evidence the Application has calculated from the users’ inputs and a prediction based on this evidence on whether they will get a reduction for their assessment or not. The users can also see the tax benefits they get from this reduction and experiment with different values to see different results. They have a choice of going back to change their evidence in the previous steps by clicking the left-arrow button or exit the application in which they will be greeted by a thank you note with a link to the survey on the Application.
Extracy
