Duration:
3 Weeks
Role:
UX Designer
Tools:
Sketch, InVision
UpRight Law (UL) is an online legal law firm that allows its clients file for chapter 7 and 13 bankruptcy virtually — over Skype or Google Hangouts.
UL needed a custom client portal that would decrease cancellation rates, increase collections and reduce overhead.
The team identified the need to provide users with more information and more control over their payments. The solution we proposed relieved both pain points. It also showed the potential to significantly reduce cancellation rates and overhead.
The solution needed to be mobile-friendly.
UL is unable to provide any legal service —aside from corresponding to clients and providing advice — until the company had been paid in full.
The solution cannot allow users to reduce their monthly payments —increasing the monthly payment, however, is allowed and encouraged.
When a person is facing financial difficulty they can elect to declare either Chapter 7 or Chapter 13 bankruptcy.
Whether a person declares Chapter 7 or Chapter 13, the process remains essentially the same:
Client meets attorney & starts payment plan.
Client completes payment plan.
Attorney submits bankruptcy petition.
Panel trustee grants financial relief to client.
Client meets attorney & starts payment plan.
Client Portal Solution
UL envisions our solution bridging users between step 1 and step 2 to reduce cancellation rates.
Client completes payment plan.
We looked at online law service competitors — those that offered legal services for bankruptcy and compete for UL's clients— including Pardon My Debt, Freedom Debt Relief, and other traditional law firms like Debt Stoppers.
Self-Filing Bankruptcy Site
+
Allows the user to file for chapter 7 bankruptcy at less than half the cost of filing through an attorney.
–
Process offers no guidance or legal council for users.
–
The success rate of filing a bankruptcy petition is much lower vs filing with an attorney.
Credit Negotiator Company
+
Fees are cheaper than filing for bankruptcy through an attorney.
+
Credit score may be incur less of a loss than filing for bankruptcy.
–
Outcome will require user to pay back some portion of the debt that is owed to creditors.
Local Bankruptcy Law Firm
+
Offers legal counsel; higher quality than the cheaper alternatives.
+
Legal fees cheaper than UpRight Law on average.
–
Requires clients to show up to a physical location — inconvenient and possibly embarrassing
In our kickoff meeting, UL told us they did not have any competitors, and while we could verify that to a degree – no other law firm provided the experience of filing bankruptcy entirely online – there were a lot of legal services that were competing over the same audience and most options were much cheaper.
I wanted to investigate opportunities to reduce overhead, one of UL's KPIs. I asked Jocelyn to provide call data to understand what UL clients were calling about:
Called to reschedule a payment
Called to ask a legal question
Called to request a status update on their payment
Called to update personal info
Contrary to what we were told, UL clients did ask legal questions. The data showed us that there were many more opportunities to save resources for both UL and their clients.
We interviewed 5 current UL users and 2 other users that filed for bankruptcy.
We summarized our findings into 6 main insights:
Users wanted to know the day and the exact hour of when the UL payment would be withdrawn.
Divorce, job loss or medical emergencies were more common reasons for filing for bankruptcy than poor money management.
Bankruptcy is scary; users told us they Googled bankruptcy information to feel reassured as well as to educate themselves.
Bankruptcy laws vary by jurisdiction — where the user lives. This means that information found on Google may not be applicable to the user's situation.
Some users changed numbers while others chose not to pick up their phone at all. This also made it difficult for UL to contact users.
Some users were embarrassed to call UL representatives. During testing we noticed some users preferring to have their video cameras off.
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In order to address some of the stressors that debtors face, users need a way to feel in control of their payments and need a way to stay informed of the bankruptcy process so they can visualize themselves advancing towards a more hopeful future.
In order to determine our solution's ability to solve the problem we identified three questions that we believed needed to be addressed:
Does the User Feel More In Control?
Does the User Feel Informed?
Does the User Feel More Motivated to Finish the Payment Plan?
Once we had defined the problem, we asked ourselves, "Was another client portal necessary to solve the problem"? To find out, we evaluated the current and other firm's portal based on the three measures of success — did users feel more in control, informed and motivated?
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Based on our evaluations of both portals it was clear that a new solution was needed to address our user's problem.
To keep ourselves accountable to the problem statement, we drafted three design guidelines to help us craft our concepts.
The design should help users feel that they are making progress towards a brighter future.
Develop a sense of responsibility and loyalty between the client and UpRight Law throughout the bankruptcy process.
The design should allow the user to easily zoom in and out of the bankruptcy process.
We presented our concepts in front of five UL clients and one bankruptcy filer from Debt Stoppers:
The FAQ hub I designed would help users find answers to their legal questions. All results matched to the client's legal jurisdiction to ensure the answer's accuracy. I also added contact CTAs within the functionality in case a search fails to provide a satisfying answer.
All users preferred the FAQ hub to Google searching. Some users told us they had to Google three or four different sites to make sure they had the correct answer to their question. The FAQ hub offered them a more efficient and accurate alternative.
Users that described themselves as research-intensive liked this feature the most.
My teammate designed a concept that allowed users to make a one-time payment change and a recurring payment change. The one-time payment change allowed users to defer their payment to a later date while the recurring payment change gave users the flexibility to change their payment date permanently.
Users preferred my teammate’s solution to the current method of calling UL to request a change because it saved them the embarrassment of having to tell someone they couldn't pay.
Users needed to change the payment schedule if they changed jobs or to defer payments due to unexpected expenses or other setbacks.
In the case of users being late on a payment or a document, a notification banner and an accompanying timer warned users that that their case would be dropped if certain conditions went unmet.
I mocked up a wireframe to observe user's reaction to the feature.
Most users described the the feature as “terrifying”, “stressful”, “unnecessary”. Rather than motivate users to take action, most told us that the timer made them feel discouraged and afraid.
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The FAQ Hub and Change Payment Date were the most effective features in addressing the problem. We took out features like the testimonials, as users saw them as gimmicky and inauthentic. The Countdown Timer was also confirmed as a bust.
Kept
One user preferred a live chat feature over the other contact CTAs in the FAQ search results. UL made it clear in previous meetings that they were against live chat due to the cost. We included a click to call CTA as a compromise.
Kept
Some of the copy for our CTAs received polarizing responses. Above one CTA we had the copy "Struggling to meet payments?". Some users identified with the word struggling, while others said that the word was condescending. Despite the positive feedback from some, the team decided to use more neutral language to avoid upsetting any users.
Cut
During concept testing the team was able to prove that the countdown timer had the potential to damage relationships with UL clients. Further, we heard that the countdown timer would not have an effect on motivating users to complete an action.
In order to deliver a cohesive experience, our client portal needed a navigation bar that would provide access to the Dashboard, FAQ Hub, and the Change Payment Date screen.
After looking at UL's future roadmap, we added a hamburger menu to future-proof the menu.
The team A/B tested two variations of the home screen during concept testing.
Users liked the half circle graphs from one variation and the personalization from the other.
The team designed the home screen together, which was beneficial in getting everyone to agree on a design language for the rest of the portal.
We tested with 4 clients of UL. Users went through 3 different scenarios, looking up a question and contacting a UL rep, making a payment change, and making a payment.
'Easy to use', 'informative', and 'reassuring' were some of the adjectives users told us when describing the FAQ Hub. Users that described themselves as research-oriented singled out this feature as their favorite.
Most users had little trouble differentiating the recurring payment schedule change vs the one-time payment change. One user was confused by the wording and suggested that recurring change is renamed to ‘permanent’ change.
Users also desired to know the length of time it would take to process the payment change request upfront.
During usability testing we noticed that some users needed context of the payment due date, especially during the request a payment schedule change scenario.
We realized that our solution needed to adapt around the UL monthly payment to better serve the user. After usability testing we reiterated on our design to create a dynamic client portal.
This state is activate if a user our current on their payment. Features like speeding up a filing date and request a payment change are offered due to the client's ability to make payments.
This state is active if a user is late on their payment. The portal state prioritizes the missing payment as the main action. Features like make a payment change request require users to call a UL rep to discuss the best course of action.
All users told us the ability to change their payment schedule made them feel more in control of their situation.
The payment ledger reassured users that they would know that their payment went through.
Users felt that the FAQ Hub made information more accessible and was more trustworthy than their current method of information gathering.
Bankruptcy is scary and the FAQ Hub made it easy for users to educate themselves and feel reassured of their situation.
Users noted that seeing the payment tracker move closer to their goal was an effective way to visualize progress.
We believe our solution motivated users but the team recommends A/B testing our solution against the current client portal and analyzing cancellation rates.
UL was impressed with our solution. We challenged the client with a few features, namely giving users the ability to change their payment schedule or request a deferral within the portal. UL allowed this ability but did not advertise it as the CFO feared that users would abuse the payment deferrals.
We heard the opposite from users, changing their payment schedule gave them the breathing room needed to stick with the bankruptcy process rather than cancel. Our point of contact also agreed with but needed evidence to convince the CFO. I suggested that UL A/B test our solution with the current client portal.
I reached out to Matt a few weeks later and heard that the team at BridgeLegal was preparing to A/B test our solution.
Many of my initial assumptions about bankruptcy were challenged early on and over time I grew to empathize with our users.
I also learned that insights can happen anywhere within the design process. The idea to add dynamic states to the client portal came from usability testing, during the final leg of the UX sprint. This ended up being my favorite feature of the project due to its ability to allow UL to be flexible in providing only certain users to access to some of our more controversial features.
Check out the full prototype below:
Clickable Prototype