Category: Reading

NCSC User Testing Toolkit

Post author By Margaret
Post date October 16, 2024
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The Access to Justice team at the National Center for State Courts has a new User Testing Toolkit out. It can help courts and their partners get user feedback on key papers, services, and tools, like:

Court Forms: are they understandable and actionable?
Self-Help Materials: can litigants find and engage with them effectively?
Court Websites: are they discoverable, accessible, and useful?
Efiling Systems: are they easy to use, and to get right the first time?
Signage and Wayfinding: can people easily find their way around in-person and digital court spaces, with dignity?
Accessibility: are the courts physical and digital platforms sufficiently easy to use for all different kinds of people?

The toolkit has background guidance on user testing, strategies for planning testing sessions, and example materials to use in planning, recruitment, facilitation, and analysis.

See more:

G. Vazquez, Z. Zarnow. User Testing Toolkit: Improving Court Usability and Access: A Toolkit for Inclusive and Effective User
Testing, Version 1. [Williamsburg, VA: The National Center for State Courts, 2024]: https://www.ncsc.org/__data/assets/pdf_file/0012/104124/User-Testing-Toolkit.pdf

Tags court testing, Legal Design, NCSC, User testing

Reading

Report on litigants’ outcomes on Zoom court hearings

Post author By Margaret
Post date November 27, 2023
No Comments on Report on litigants’ outcomes on Zoom court hearings

The Indiana University team, led by professor Victor Quintanilla, has released the report Accessing Justice with Zoom: Experiences and Outcomes in Online Civil Courts.

The team had set up a novel system to recruit court users to give feedback about their experience attending court in-person or remotely, combining that with administrative data and observational data about how the hearings proceeded. This allows them to examine the various effects, preferences, and outcomes that are at play now that online/remote/Zoom court proceedings are now available.

Explore some of the findings that the team found with Indiana court users, including

the technological capability and usage of litigants
comparison of preferences for remote hearings vs in person
how people participated in remote hearings
how frequently litigants experienced technical issues
what kinds of concerns and dynamics were interrelated

See more at the Indiana Equity Accelerator.

Tags online hearings, user experience of courts, zoom court

Reading

Court focus on user-centered experience & inclusive design

Post author By Margaret
Post date March 15, 2023
No Comments on Court focus on user-centered experience & inclusive design

The National Center for State Courts has a working group of justice leaders who have released a December 2022 report “Just Horizons” — pointing to systemic vulnerabilities in the court system and opportunities for building a better future, where the institutions are strong, the public is served, and there is a healthy justice ecosystem.

There are 6 areas of Vulnerabilities & Opportunities laid out, where justice institutions can invest to strengthen their performance, impact, and infrastructure. These include a focus on the future, using data, private entity management, emergency preparedness, future-ready workforce, and user-centered design.

https://www.ncsc.org/consulting-and-research/areas-of-expertise/leadership-and-governance/thought-leadership-and-strategic-planning/just-horizons

These areas all resonate with our work at the Legal Design Lab:

A focus on the intentional design of civic systems: government institutions like courts should be looking to the future to see what kinds of services, relationships, infrastructure, and outcomes they want to be having. They should work with diverse stakeholders to set this future agenda, and scope out projects to reach this better future.
Prioritizing the users of the government institutions, rather than just the institutions themselves: many times, when we talk about what government institutions like courts should be doing, the focus is on internal metrics — efficiency, cases closed, calendaring, staffing, and budget. These are important factors, but they must be balanced out with metrics that reflect the interests of the people the institutions are meant to help and serve.
Participation of diverse stakeholders in providing feedback about the status quo, finding and scoping new solutions, and evaluating new revisions to ensure they are serving the audiences as intended.

https://www.ncsc.org/consulting-and-research/areas-of-expertise/leadership-and-governance/thought-leadership-and-strategic-planning/just-horizons/vcards/vulnerability-2

Tags just horizons, national center for state courts, state courts

Language Access Reading Wayfinding in legal system

How graphic design helps us navigate buildings

Post author By Margaret
Post date September 3, 2018
No Comments on How graphic design helps us navigate buildings

This 99 Design article by Alex Bigman gives a photo tour of wayfinding designs from hospitals, airports, and other government buildings.

If it weren’t for graphic design, you’d have a lot more trouble finding the restroom. Office buildings, museums and libraries would also become virtually impossible to navigate. And garages? Don’t even bother trying to remember where you parked.
Though we often take it for granted, wayfinding design – the environmental design practice involving the creation of signs and directories to help us figure out where we are and where we want to go in structures – is a key function of graphic design in everyday urban life.
Not long ago we became fascinated by the debates surrounding subway map design, and now wayfinding design has captivated us as well. Check out these thirty examples of awesome and unusual wayfinding signage, and think of how lost you’d be without it.