Beginner’s Guide — Design Thinking for Legal Design
You might wonder, “What does design thinking have to do with the legal world?” Well, the answer is simple: everything!
Introduction
In this chapter, we’re going to introduce the principles of design thinking and how to use this idea in your daily life.
Definition:
Design thinking is a user-centered approach to creating innovative solutions for everyday problems.
What does it mean:
Design thinking is utilizing a structured thinking process to create solutions that are focused on the user and their everyday problems. This process is usually divided into different phases/stages: emphasizing, defining, ideating, prototyping, and testing.
Why it matters:
These phases encourage us to question the status quo, challenge assumptions, and explore new possibilities. This process invites us to think outside the box, take risks, and embrace uncertainty. Design thinking reminds us that creativity knows no boundaries and that the best solutions often come from unexpected places.
What if you don’t use design thinking?
It’s entirely possible never to have used design thinking consciously. But it’s highly probable to have used design thinking in some capacity unconsciously. We want to bring that process more to the foreground. Because when it isn’t applied, strange things can happen.
A great example is that people have expectations and live by the predictability of day-to-day things. It’s vital to consider the users and their assumptions when designing. See below, Ford had to recall these cars because of this mistake. Can you identify what’s wrong with the design?
Next to the multimedia console, users expect the buttons to be related to the display. However, Ford chooses to put the transmission buttons next to it, including the engine on/off button. It might have looked like a novel design solution on paper, but it had serious implications for the users that turned their engine off whilst driving.
How could design thinking have helped?
The issue in this is clearly that the designers weren’t thinking of people. It’s important to make the distinction between users and people. Designers tend to forget this from time to time. Rational users see the letters or words on the buttons and deduce it’s an engine on/off button. Stressed people looking for a parking spot accidentally push that button to turn off the radio.
If a designer cannot emphasize the problem and define what the user actually needs, it might lead to bad design. Even though designers might think they know what’s best for the users, the user won’t use the ‘solution’ if it doesn’t address the problem and needs.
Why it matters:
Design is sometimes thought of as pleasurable aesthetics and emotions added to a product. But design thinking looks to a much broader spectrum. The product or service has to be usable, accessible, affordable, and enjoyable. We will look at these principles later in a different blog post. But keep in mind that design thinking is a complete process where in every phase, the user is at the heart of that.
Design thinking principles
Design thinking can be outlined in 5 distinct stages, but that doesn’t mean that it’s a sequential process. It’s inevitable to go back and forth between stages to refine previous results or conclusions. Arriving at the wrong solution initially is more than likely and can even be expected.
1. Empathize
Put yourself in the shoes of your clients, users, or stakeholders.
Understand the users' needs, desires, and pain points. Listening to stories, observing behaviors, and conversing with people will help understand them.
Example:
Conduct research to understand what the users say, think, do, and feel. This is something we call ‘empathy mapping.’ Further information can be found here.
2. Define
Outline your user’s problems and needs.
All the information gathered in the empathize stage is organized in this phase. The observations need to be analyzed, and a definition of the core problem can be synthesized. It’s crucial in this phase to ask the right questions to identify the key issue. This phase is not about the solution and solely about the problems and requirements of the users.
Example:
Creating personas with different problems and needs keeps the analysis human-centered.
3. Ideate
Challenge assumptions and create ideas.
This is the moment when creativity can run wild! But always keep the users’ needs and issues in mind. Look for alternative angles to the problem and identify innovative solutions to the problem statement that you’ve defined in the previous stages.
Examples:
- brainstorming techniques
- Sketching to visualize your ideas and bring them to life.
4. Prototype
Start creating solutions
It’s critical to gather feedback from users as early as possible. Building quick and low-cost prototypes are a great way to test your ideas in the real world. The possibilities are endless; think of mock-ups, storyboards, digital prototypes, physical (scale) models, or whatever is necessary to experiment with together with users. The goal is to create something to imitate the user experience.
Example:
This could involve paper prototyping.
5. Test
Try your solutions
In this phase, the feedback is gathered by letting users use ;) And experience the prototype. With this new information, it’s vital to iterate and re-design new problem-solving methods. This might entail an updated prototype, but it could also mean the key issues need to be more precisely defined. Continue to iterate until the tests are completed to the satisfaction of the users.
Example:
Let users touch and feel (but don’t explain!) the prototype and see if they understand the controls.
What about Legal Design (thinking)?
To circle back to legal design, what does design thinking have to do with the legal world? The answer is simple: everything!
Legal design is the application of design thinking principles to the legal field. Legal design is about reimagining how to communicate legal information, deliver legal services, and experience legal processes to the users. The users in the legal field can be professionals, but ordinary folks often need to navigate the choppy waters of legal processes.
The legal is a traditional system based on the premise that everyone wants or at least can read legal documents filled with complicated jargon. It’s easy to define the problem of the users who are not legal professionals because these legal processes can be overwhelming, intimidating, and make people feel lost. But the user can also be a judge who lacks super specific technical knowledge. Or the user is the lawyer who needs to keep everyone focused for two hours of oral arguments. So, the first stages of design thinking can help formulate the proposed solution's correct parameters.
In the next phase(s) of legal design thinking, it’s time to ideate the possible solutions to break down these complex legal matters. This can be achieved by making information digestible with the help of visuals, infographics, and plain language that anyone can understand. It can also be designing intuitive, efficient, and empowering legal processes for everyone.
To summarize: legal design is not about designing pretty documents. Design thinking in legal design goes beyond aesthetics. Legal design involves constant experimentation, iteration, and refinement of solutions based on feedback and real-world testing. It’s about embracing failure as an opportunity to learn and grow. The legal design fosters collaboration and interdisciplinary approaches, bringing legal experts, designers, technologists, and other stakeholders together to co-create innovative solutions.
Conclusion
To understand legal design, one must understand design thinking and its core principle. The idea of design thinking is putting the user –an actual person– central in all decisions toward the finished product. To create a better legal experience, it’s critical to fundamentally understand the users’ needs, wishes, situations, and problems.
This post is originally published on our website Patroon. You can check the original version, which is in Dutch, here -> Beginnersgids: design thinking en legal design
