RESPONSIVE SITE FOR LIFEPLAN

LifePlan was a fully responsive website launched as a zero-to-one business expansion for LegalZoom – giving B2B employees access to estate planning benefits and subscriptions for legal, tax, financial, and insurance advice. Through LifePlan’s online tools, employees could track major life events, schedule advice sessions, and easily create, store, and share their estate plans.

OUR SITUATION

LifePlan was a newly-formed business expansion team at LegalZoom, with one major client contract requiring that we provide an online website for their 44,000 employees by January 1, 2018.

An initial version of the website existed, but it lacked the detailed content and new features planned for v2.

This meant we had just 4 months to conceive, redesign, build, QA, and launch the v2 site.

Challenges:

• We had a design system that lacked many patterns, so we paved the way for several new patterns.

• Our newly formed team underwent the Tuckman Model, and would quickly need to learn how to form, storm, norm and perform together.

• With no dedicated UX Researcher, we had to conduct discovery and research methods on our own.

• The website would need to smoothly and smartly integrate features from the current LegalZoom website.

MY TASK

As Lead UX designer, I led the UX design and strategy from end-to-end that would:

1. Deliver a v2 website for client employees to log in and fully take advantage of the LifePlan benefit offerings

2. Guarantee the website responsively worked on desktop as well as mobile devices

3. Align business and sales-driven goals with those of the users of the website

4. Launch the MVP of the v2 website within an aggressive timeline of 4 months

5. Leverage data to inform improvements post-launch, and propose user-centric improvements

MY ACTIONS

1. IDEATION Workession

When I joined the team, there was already a v1 of the site built, and our job was to create v2 using the same assumptions.

With no time for research or discovery - the team and I ideated right away to brainstorm the IA and flows.

2. uNmoderated card sort

The team disagreed on the navigation IA. To resolve and push us forward, I conducted unmoderated open card sorts using OptimalSort on Usertesting.com.

3. CX flows

To show when and how the CX (Customer Experience) related to the site, I made many screen flows. This one example shows how Member Advisors connected 3rd party advisors to LifePlan customers.

4. HI FIDELITY PROTOTYPES

The primary feature was a "Life Event" dashboard for users to create a timeline of events that occur in their life. For each life event, they could get tips and guidance from LifePlan.

Using Axure RP, I designed and prototyped one concept to help the tech team assess feasibility. I also planned to user-test this design but the team deferred the feature for the sake of time.

5. mvp launch

After lots of value-engineering, we successfully launched MVP on time on January 1, 2018. It was a relief to meet our contractual obligations to our clients and give users a benefit that many wished they had known about sooner.

*All comps designed by Daniel Harris, UI designer.

6. UX PIPELINE Priorities

Next, leadership set our goal to increase our subscribers from 44k to 140K by January 2018 (9 months). I set my goal to improve the current experience. To track ideas, I made a weighted matrix to recommend UX improvements for the pipeline. It showed that a consumer-facing Marketing site was the next priority.

7. DATA-BASED pain points

Our Content Manager and UI team took on the Marketing Site, while I focused on research and discovery. I partnered with our Member Advisors to get a list of recorded customer problem calls. By listening to these calls, I could find their associated web session recorded in Quantum Metrics videos.

I also partnered with our Service Designer to create a phone survey for our Member Advisors to conduct for us. The results of this survey also informed us of any pain points.

When I heard or saw a user pain point, I documented it on an Affinity Map in Mural.

8. recommending fixes

The biggest pain point was the Login and account Activation sequence. I made flows to compare the current experience vs the preferred experience, and gave the team recommendations.

9. USER TESTING

The team also disagreed on how to users should create new passwords. I researched it but found no definitive study, so we did our own. With UserTesting.com, I ran 10 users through unmoderated AB tests in creating a new password in a prototype I made in Axure.

We tracked observations on an affinity map matrix, and the results showed that a dual input field method was more effective.

THE RESULT

The project is ongoing, and the tech team is now building the Activation improvements that I designed before I left LegalZoom. We plan to build the password creation improvements in Q3/2019. We're excited to see how this improves our experience!

MY TAKEAWAY

I learned how to take an MVP from concept, launch, and iterative improvements. Key points that the team and I learned:

• We should design the entire end-to-end system before iterating on feature improvements.

• How to use tools such as video and voice recording to measure user pain points.

• How to assess and rank UX improvements for the roadmap.

• How and when to use tests methods such as card sorts and AB tests to settle disagreements among the team.

• How to build hi fidelity Axure prototypes with Sketch to communicate and validate designs.