The value of legal design for business
Design skepticism in the legal sector is often due to a lack of data and understanding of the value that design brings to the business.
Written by Emma Hertzberg
We talk about design when we want to specifically indicate how something is created (by using design) or by who (by a designer). Creating something by using design brings measurable value to the outcome and the people affected by it. Design makes solutions more usable and desirable, eliminating risks and ensuring the end solution will be usable and engaging. But what exactly is ‘design’, and how it can bring all this value to legal?
Design is about improving the world around us by approaching challenges from a different perspective
The core idea in design has always been to solve challenges in our homes, societies, work-places, business, and the environment. Designers are creative problem solvers and good design aims to serve as many people as possible, as well as possible. Design is not restricted to be solving only certain kinds of challenges in a certain industry, the mindset, methodologies, processes, and tools can be applied to improve many industries — including legal.
Whether it is the architecture in your own home, grocery store experience, elderly care, the Swiss army knife or your organization's business model it is all designed. Some design around us is not remarkable, some work so well you don’t even notice it and some is just utterly bad design. The success of the design process determinates the viability of the end solution.
Design is a toolbox for a complex legal world
Let’s use building a treehouse as a metaphor here. Hammer is a great tool for building a treehouse for kids, but it has very little use when you need to paint the treehouse. In order to build a treehouse, you need your whole toolbox.
The toolbox in this example is design and the builder is a designer. The treehouse is the solution created. The kids are users who are affected by the end solution. Hammer represents a specific design talent (i.e. service design), and hammering a nail represents a method used in the design industry (i.e. workshop). You would not able to build a treehouse by using just a hammer. It is equally difficult to transform the legal industry by using just one tool or talent to help you, like service design or workshops.
The job of a treehouse builder starts from somebody’s need to have a place of solitude. A legal designer’s job starts with a need in the legal industry. The builder would start by emphasizing with the kids — listening to them and trying to figure out why do the kids need a place for quiet time or a place to call ‘my own’. By asking well-fraised questions the builder would learn about their motives and hopes and together with the kids, the builder would come up with the best solution — a specific kind of treehouse in this case.
Without emphasizing with the users, the kids, the end result would be based on solely this builders' own thoughts and presumptions about what is the best solution. With some luck, that could be a usable solution. But do we really want to let the success of the project be based on luck when we can have real data? The recent McKinsey research “The business value of design” suggests that a lot of the organizations do, by showing that over 40 % of the companies surveyed still aren’t talking to their end users during development. This needs to change, for in order for the design process to work its magic it needs its users.
We can not solve complex legal problems, with multiple stakeholders and the weight of history (you know, that “we have always done it this way” mindset) with a single skill or pondering with the questions alone. We need collaboration with different industries, our holistic skills set, and real user data, measuring impact and new business models to back the decisions and provide information whether further testing or iteration is needed.
The value of design in the legal industry
In order to understand the value of design for business and in the legal industry, it is crucial to understand what design is, where it can have the biggest effect and measure it as you would measure any other investment. Measuring the business value of design is still something that is not done enough. Many legal design initiatives start and finish without any success measurements, bigger strategy or any knowledge of the real impact that the project or change has.
The legal industry can look for advice from industries that have used and benefitted from design for longer time now to learn more about how the success and value of design are being measured and which are the key areas to invest in design.
McKinsey’s research from October 2018 analyzed more than 2 million pieces of financial data from 300 public companies during a 5 year research period and uncovered these four learnings about implementing design to organizational operations in retail banking, consumer goods, and medical technology that increased revenue and total returns most.
1. More than a feeling — It is analytical leadership
Tracking design’s impact as a metric just as rigorously as you would track cost and revenue. McKinsey cited one gaming company that tracked how a small usability tweak to its home page increased sales by 25%.
2. More than department — It is cross-functional talent
Embedding designers in cross-functional teams and incentivizing top design talent. McKinsey pointed to Spotify as an example because the company gives its designers autonomy within a diverse environment–unlike a consumer packaged goods company, which was bleeding designers because they had to spend time making slide decks look pretty for the marketing team.
3. More than a phase — It is a continuous iteration
Encouraging research, early-stage prototyping, and iterating. Just because a product or service is launched doesn’t mean the design work ends. One cruise ship company that McKinsey highlighted spoke with passengers, assessed which activities were most popular by looking at payment data, and analyzed security feeds with machine learning algorithms to find inefficiencies in a ship’s layouts–all in the name of improving user experience over time.
4. More than a product — It is user experience
Putting users first by actually talking to them. This helps to think outside of a standard user experience. One hotel that McKinsey underlined presented visitors with souvenir rubber ducks embossed with an image of the host city–with the encouragement to collect more rubber ducks from the hotel’s other locations. The initiative improved retention 3% over time.
Top-quartile companies in design—and leading financial performers—excelled in all four areas.
Good design brings measurable value to the end solution
Every dollar that is spent in design, is not a dollar earned. Organizations and teams need to have a clear understanding of how design can improve their business and what are the core functions and focus points. Good design goes through an analytical and research-based process full of iteration, user feedback and a variety of decisions to ensure that the outcome will answer to the needs of the stakeholder (users, business, employees…), be adopted more effortlessly by increasing ownership by involving users in the process, reduce risks and last time.
