UX Design and Legal Design: Two Worlds, One Goal

UX and Legal Design Principles

The core principles of UX design are essential to good design and, therefore, to a good legal designer. Let's take a closer look at these principles:

Usability

What: A product or service should be easy and understandable to everyone, regardless of their background or experience.

Example: Imagine you are drafting a contract. Make sure it is clear and concise, with a logical structure and simple layout. This allows both legal professionals and laypeople to quickly and easily understand the contract and be confident that they are making the right decisions.

Consistency

What: Consistency in design means that similar elements and interactions are presented and executed in a similar way so that users can quickly adapt and intuitively work with the system without surprises or inconsistencies.

Example: Imagine a Web site in which the buttons on one page have a rectangular shape and on another page have a round shape. This lack of consistency can lead to user confusion and doubt, worsening the user experience. By keeping the shape of the buttons consistent, users know what to expect and can better focus on the content and functionality of the website.

Consistency goes beyond product design. It can also be applied to legal processes within a firm and even to a country's entire legal system. If you apply the principles consistently everywhere, all services will work seamlessly and intuitively. It is important to ensure that people can navigate the system on autopilot, which increases accessibility.

How: To ensure consistency, you can use design patterns and style guides to ensure that similar elements are presented and executed in a similar way. For example, consider using the same colors, fonts and navigation styles in all parts of a website or app. Maintaining consistent terminology and tone of voice in legal documents and communications also helps create a cohesive and predictable system.

By paying attention to consistency in your design, you not only increase usability and accessibility, but also promote users' confidence in the product or service and their willingness to continue working with it.

Hierarchy (or: order of information).

What: Hierarchy in design means organizing and presenting information based on its importance. This helps users prioritize information and tasks, allowing them to work more efficiently and make more informed decisions.

Example: Imagine an insurance policy document. Instead of presenting all the information in a long, continuous text, a well-designed document would clearly display the most important information, such as coverage and premium, while less important information, such as terms and conditions and exceptions, can be displayed in a less prominent place.

How: Hierarchy can be achieved by using different design elements, such as:

• Typography: Use different font sizes, fonts and styles (e.g., bold, italic) to distinguish between important and less important information.
• Color: Use contrasting colors to draw attention to important information and muted colors for background information.
• Size: Make important elements larger and more visible, while less important

Accessibility

What: Accessibility means designing products, services and environments that are usable by people with a variety of abilities, disabilities or impairments. The goal is to enable as many people as possible to participate fully in the use of a product or service.

Example: An accessibly designed legal website ensures that all users, including those with visual impairments, can understand and interact with the content. This can be achieved through the use of adequate color contrast, a clearly readable font, alternative text for images, and support for screen readers.

How: To ensure accessibility, you can focus on the following aspects:

• Readability: Choose fonts and colors that are easy to read, even for people with impaired vision. Use adequate color contrast and avoid using color as the sole means of communication.
• Navigation: Make navigation intuitive and consistent so that users with different skills and devices can easily find what they are looking for.
• Alternative content: Provide alternative text for images and multimedia so that people with visual or hearing impairments can understand and benefit from the content.
• Scalability: Ensure that the content and layout are scalable so that users with different screen resolutions and zoom levels can easily view and read the content.
• Keyboard Accessibility: Make all interactions and navigation accessible through the keyboard so that people who cannot use a mouse or touchscreen can still fully participate.

Legal Design and UX Design

Legal design and UX design share many common principles, as they both focus on creating user-friendly, accessible and intuitive products or services. By applying UX design to legal documents, systems and processes, we can make them more user-friendly and accessible to everyone, regardless of their knowledge, background or abilities. Legal jargon can be confusing and intimidating enough, so let's help the average user by creating designs that are clear, consistent, well-structured and accessible to all.