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Project

LegalZoom helps customers complete legal matters without letting them go through attorneys and pay an expensive cost. From a business perspective, estate planning products bring in about $11M for LegalZoom. By redesigning this experience, we hope to stay competitive in the estate planning field, build customer loyalty as they need to revise their documents in the future, increase brand reputation which helps with word of mouth marketing.

From a customer’s perspective, customers are most frustrated with understanding which estate planning documents to get and what steps to take in order to make sure their documents can stand in court. We hope our new design will help customers feel at peace after using LegalZoom to create their estate planning documents.

My role as the sole UX designer was to redesign the pre-purchase and post-purchase experience by researching the users and current market, design, and test mid-fidelity prototypes. I collaborated with the product managers, UI designer, and product marketing manager.

Challenge

My challenge was the constraints that were set by the current My Account system. We also faced developer resource limitations.

Solution

To remove the initial confusion around estate planning documents, we designed a quiz to help customers identify which estate planning documents they needed. We remove the document names and created a master questionnaire, simulating the experience of attorney consultation to help users draft their estate planning documents. Lastly, we provide a digital checklist to create a hand holding experience for customers to finish and make sure their documents can hold in court.

01. Discovery & Research

Competitor Analysis

I researched 10 competitors in order to understand the current landscape of the market, and get inspirations for the redesign. Here are my highlighted learnings that shaped our design solution:

• Short questionnaires

  • Short questionnaires and forms to keep it short and sweet, help keep users engaged.

• Good storytelling

  • Consistent branding and marketing that focus on storytelling makes it more relatable. They also give specific stories and examples that fit their personas.

• Dynamic response

  • Questions react immediately depending on users’ answers to help personalize their experience.

• Checklist and steps

  • To explain to users what they need to do and what is left for them to.

Research insights

To gain a better understanding of the users, I conducted user interviews and synthesized research results. Here are some of the key research insights from the study that helped shaped the design solution.

Persona

Based on our research, we identified there are four types of users depending on their estate planning knowledge and triggers. I decided to solve for the persona that has the least estate planning experience because that will help solve the most complicated case.

User Flow

I created user flows based on the different personas because we want to have a clear path of how things work before drawing wireframes. I chose Esther’s path to create the user flow because her path is the most complicated and need the most assistance. For more details, you can visit my user flow here.

Mid-Fidelity Wireframes

To solve for this problem, I brainstormed ideas and designed mid-fidelity wireframes to test. I designed a master estate planning document questionnaire that merged all 4 major estate planning documents, and a hand holding checklist to guide customers even after they have submitted to LegalZoom. Prototype link

Usability Test & design review with customer care team

I conducted moderated usability testing and drove the design review with our customer care and fulfillment team in Austin to validate my design. Here are a few highlighted learnings:

• Master questionnaire

  • The master questionnaire helped users to have a seamless experience instead of jumping between 4 different document experience.

• Checklist is the right direction

  • The new checklist design in the dashboard greatly helped users to understand their next steps in their estate planning process. Funding their trust and getting their documents notarized are often steps customers miss. Now the checklist clearly guide them to take these actions.

• Expand on “gifts” section

  • Customer care team mentioned that is a part of the questionnaire that customers always have questions on. In our following iteration, we would expand the resources on this area.  
    

Final Solution

Solution 1: User Experience based on their EP expertise

Our customers come from different expertise level. From having no knowledge on estate planning, to having done it for someone previously and now doing it for themselves or vice versa…

For our pre-purchase experience, we wanted to design an experience based on users’ expertise and knowledge level of Estate Planning. 

We designed a quiz, and by answering simple questions, users would be guided to a bundle of document recommendation that fits their needs.

Or if they are an expert, they can go ahead and choose the document that suits their needs.

Solution 2: A personable approach to a solemn matter

Estate Planning can be a daunting topic. After all, you are talking about what happens after you pass away. I want to humanize this experience.

I designed a family builder interaction at the beginning of our questionnaire, so it would be more approachable and personable. This also avoids users from repeatedly answering the same personal information over and over again like the current experience.

Solution 3: Removing document names

Another confusing part of Estate Planning is the document names. We solved this by removing the document names in our post-purchase experience. 

Imagine you are actually going through an attorney. They wouldn’t trouble you with the document names, they will just ask you questions.

We changed all the categories in post-purchase questionnaire by grouping similar questions from different documents, and name these categories that are in a user-friendly language, creating a seamless experience - a master questionnaire.

Solution 4: Handholding step by step checklist

Current users often feel lost after filling out our questionnaires. They didn’t know they have additional steps to complete before their documents are official. 

We guided them step by step after they have finished filling out everything and receiving their documents, especially guiding them through notarization and funding their trusts.

Learning Recap

This project has been very insightful. I learned a lot by relying on our customer care team as they are the frontline of our company since they deal with customers’ problems everyday. After conducting usability tests and focus group, it further supported our hypothesis that our product will help users’ estate planning experience by providing clear step-by-step guidance and avoid legal terms.

I’ve also learned to work with other product strike teams. When I first worked on the post-purchase experience, I was honed in and worked with my immediate strike team only. However, we later realized that the Business team was also designing a dashboard too. We quickly recovered by trying to see which part of the dashboard structure could be reused.