Sector(s)
Team Members
Project Team
Team Members and Roles on the Project:
- Dan Moriarty – Creative Lead, Planning and Discovery, UX and UI design
- Tim Broeker – Technical Lead, Backend Development, Content Migration, DevOps
- Adam Fuchs– Site Build Lead, Frontend Development, Theming, Site Building
- Aundrea Billings – Project Management, QA, Training
- Lynn Winter– Project Management, QA, Training
- Christine Coleman – Frontend Development, Theming, Site Building
- Oz Heller– Backend Development
LawHelpMN.org is one of many statewide legal aid websites across the US, each dedicated to connecting low-income residents with legal information and legal service providers.
The Minnesota-based website had been serving residents for a number of years, but was in need of an overhaul. The site overwhelmed users with confusing navigation and an overload of information on every page.
Users were sometimes connected to the wrong information and services, or missed pages that could help them with their legal issues. Electric Citizen was selected to lead the planning, design and development of the redesigned site.
About the project
Goals and Requirements
The primary goal for the redesign was to build an online application. The LawHelp team wanted a legal “triage” tool, which visitors could use to find help with their specific legal issues. Rather than solely rely on a user to find what they’re looking for by searching through an online library, the new site should guide them through a series of topic-specific questions to solutions.
The solutions themselves were varied. It could be guiding users to specific legal forms and other “self-help” documents. Or they could be referrals to registered statewide providers of legal help, specific to their needs. In some cases, the app should also begin the onboarding process of helping users become clients to these providers.
A second goal was to gather the current website’s many online resources, and reorganize them in a way that was more useful and user friendly. Everyone recognized that the old website was difficult to navigate and locate useful information, and a new approach was needed.
A third goal was to improve the site’s usefulness for the state’s many providers of legal aid to poor or disadvantaged constituents. These agencies frequently needed to refer clients to other agencies for legal assistance, but lacked an easy way to find the appropriate agency.
Finally, the new website needed to migrate to a modern CMS (Drupal), add multilingual capabilities, update the visual design, and improve both user experience and accessibility.
Solutions
Long before any code was committed and designs presented, we conducted a lengthy series of research exercises, prototypes and client meetings. Conversations centered around project goals, user personas, comparable projects and the kind of site we needed to build.
The design itself was reworked to be clean and clear. The general idea was to get out of the way of users, and keep sharp, simplified design elements in the background. A critical portion of the site users may be coming to the website in a legal crisis, and the last thing they need is a confusing, slow-loading or overly designed interface.
The biggest new feature is the “triage” tool, called the “Legal Help Guide.” This React-powered online tool guides users through a series of questions to find the legal aid they need, either through online resources or a direct referral to a service or clinic in their county. The client can manage content powering the app through Drupal.
Another great new feature is the Legal Organizations Online Network (LOON). For statewide providers of legal services, the new online tool lets them search across all registered providers, filtering across categories such as legal topics, FPG limit, age range, and service type.
Legal organizations now have a central source of information, connecting their clients with the appropriate services for their legal issue.
The redesigned site is built upon Drupal’s core multilingual capabilities, with support for 4 languages.
50% increase in traffic
500k residents served
Outcomes
Post-launch, we continue to work with the LawHelpMN team to refine and improve the site. New tools and revisions have been introduced, including A/B testing.
Legal providers have shared overwhelmingly positive feedback for the new tools, and ways the site can help them with referrals. The site is now responsive across multiple devices, and accessibility has been greatly improved towards WCAG standards. Traffic has increased over 50% since launch, and thousands of residents have utilized the new LawHelpMN guide.
We were incredibly happy...constantly getting compliments from the administrator of other states' legal information website
J. Singleton, Program Manager
Why Drupal was chosen
While many of the Legal Help sites around the country are still powered by an older CMS, a number of states have migrated to Drupal as the primary alternative. The LawHelpMN team was attracted to Drupal based on their own experience, and interaction with several other state websites who had redesigned under Drupal 7 and 8.
Electric Citizen carefully talked through each requirement with the client, and demonstrated how Drupal 8 could meet all their needs through a better content editing experience, a flexible framework for building the tools the site required, and strong capabilities with data integration.
Technical Specifications
Drupal version:
Key modules/theme/distribution used:
