Another pattern to borrow from in designing online legal services — this one from car buying. This series of interfaces could be useful in matching a customer to the right legal provider (which lawyer fits your needs?) or the right legal process (which legal path should you be pursuing?). Volkswagen stages the big decision process of ‘what car should I … Read More
Starbucks-style Customer-centered Medical Services
From the New York Times: Company Thinks It Has Answer for Lower Health Costs: Customer Service. This article profiles a double analogy — could Starbucks-style scalable customer-driven services be used to improve health care — and then could this be applied also to legal services? Virginnia Schock seemed headed for a health crisis. She was 64 years old, had poorly … Read More
Personal Finance design patterns from Anne St. Partners
Another great analog for legal services is personal finance services. A designer I’m working with sent this site from Australia as an example of great design for complex systems: Anne St. Parnter’s site on consumer-facing finance & insurance advice, calculators, and planning tools. Here are some of the tools that they offer, and interfaces they present:
The Design of Public Transit Systems’ vending machines
A Germaphobe’s Guide to Buying a Metrocard from Next City is an excellent look into the design of vending machines in NYC & SF’s transit systems. The piece examines the design of these interfaces, with the question of how these could be made more efficient, with less clicks and less touching. This examination can be a useful example to designers … Read More
NerdWallet: answers for any question about money
NerdWallet is a web platform that allows anyone to ask a question about money, finances, insurance or the like — and the site provides them with free answers in response. Once you ask a question, you can read licensed advisors’ responses to general situations like yours — and also peruse ‘Related questions’ from similar people to you. NerdWallet is focused … Read More
Podcasts that humanize complex stories & systems
An article on The New Yorker by Sarah Larson, “Serial,” Podcasts, and Humanizing the News profiles the power of audio journalism — particularly narrative non-fiction podcasts — to draw users into complex explanations with storytelling techniques. Media journalist David Carr had hosted the panel discussion with several new podcast producers — Sarah Koenig of Serial, Alex Blumberg of Startup, Alix … Read More
Call-in Radio Show
A regular radio program, in which a host fields phone calls from a broad listening audience, about their individual problems, giving them advice & educational information to help them address the problems — and presenting them as examples to the rest of the audience.
Reality TV Show
A video documenting real-life situations, but packaged into narrative arcs and characters that users can relate to, and which they want follow.
Transparency Database
People add their private data to a public database, to share the cost/time/outcome/other quantifiable value was in their own experience. Then these individuals’ experiences can be sorted & used to show trends & ranges. Others can browse the database and begin to see what is normal to pay/spend/experience in this area. (E.g., health cost transparency databases)
Best Practice Standards
Gather experts from a sector, have them create a shortlist of what principles and actions must be followed to achieve a good outcome. Test them to make sure they’re all clear, actionable & relevant. Distribute widely, with brand attached — possibly have naming/shaming for violators or awards for followers.
Strategy Calculator
Present the user with a big decision she could be making, that involves trade-offs. Identify the key factors she must weigh to make the decision, and allow her to enter in variables for each of these factors. Use her entries to recommend to her what decision to make.
Data Dashboard
Collect feeds of information, figure out what the use & action points related to these different feeds, and visually present the info to the user with pointers, signals, and other messages that indicate takeaways & trends she should care about.
The Outpost
Take a successful experience from a central, official hub — then rescale it to make it mobile, so that it can be taken out into communities that don’t typically have access to the hub. (E.g., a food truck, a mobile library, or a blood donation van)
Crowdsourced Collaboration
On a public platform, set out a first draft of a work product (or even just the topic under consideration) and give the public tools to contribute to this work product — generating content, editing and reviewing others, and sharing it out.
Explainer Graphic
Make a striking document that has images & text, which shows illustrated information (perhaps with a narrative) to help engage & inform your user on this topic.
Review Platform
Gather together users’ descriptions of their experiences with a thing — they say what was wrong, what was good, how it compares to other things in that category, and what recommendations they’d make for others.
Interactive Game
Create an experience where the user is challenged to learn information, show her knowledge, make difficult choices, and try to win rewards.
Community Networks
Bring together a group of people who can be agents of your initiative in their local circles.
Text Messaging System
Use SMS-based messages to send out automated texts and responses to users.