RESPONSIVE SITE FOR LIFEPLAN

How might LegalZoom - the online legal services company - offer its product to more users while increasing LTV (Lifetime value)? Sell estate plans and subscriptions for legal, tax, financial, and insurance advice as a B2B employee benefit.

Employees use online tools to track their life events, schedule advice sessions, and create/store/share their estate plans.

Responsive site dashboard comps by Dan Harris, UI designer.

 

PRODUCT DURATION

August 2017 - April 2019

  • 4 months for MVP of site

  • 16 months for site improvements

Role in 2019

  • Lead User Experience Designer

TEAM

  • 1 UX Designer

  • 1 Service Designer

  • 1-2 UI Designers

  • 1 Content/Copy/Marketing Manager

  • 1 Operations Manager

  • 1 Product Manager

  • 1 Analytics Manager

  • 5-8 Developers

  • 2 QA Engineers

What I did

The challenge: The sales team promised our clients a new website for their 44,000 employees by January 1, 2018. We had 4 months to conceive, design, build, QA, and launch the site.

  • Led worksessions

  • Wireframes, Flows, Prototypes

  • User tests (AB & Card Sorts)

  • Prioritized UX Feature Backlog

  • Researched Pain Points

My explorations for the Dashboard screen that I sketched to quickly share and vet with the team.

Sketching out flow concepts for the Life Event feature.

 

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.

I led a team worksession to layout the preliminary IA for the site to help generate discussions.

Flowing out the feature to schedule a financial consultation with the party, Merrill Lynch.

 

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.

To play video, click on area above.

This is the navigation that the team agreed upon after the user tests concluded.

 

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.

 

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.

It’s sped up here to reduce GIF size on this page. UI assets and comps done by Dan Harris, UI designer.

 

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.

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.

 

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.

 

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.

This is a short flow example of where a user pain point could be improved.

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.

This video shows the actual user AB test for choosing between the 2 input field vs 1 input field method when creating a password.

User results were tracked and tallied on an affinity map. The test showed that 9/10 users preferred the 2 input field method, and all users saw that as the most commonly used input method.

 

The Outcome

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

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.