Design Guide for Justice Interventions

Step 1: Focus on a Specific Part of the Justice Journey

There are many different kinds of justice innovations, depending on the step in the justice journey that your target user is on.

What phase of the system are you trying to help with?

• Discovery and Engagement. To help a person find that this system exists to help her resolve her problem, and to build her trust and engagement to participate in it
• Orientation and Triage. To help the user understand the system that they’re in, explore different paths they could take, and get a sense of what dynamics are at work.
• Process Navigation. To support the user going through a sequence of steps in order to resolve her issue.
• Strategy-making. To help the person choose among different options and deploy information to their situation.
• Following through. To assist the person in completing tasks like filling in forms, attending meetings, and meeting deadlines.

Step 2: Set the Goals & Metrics You’re Aiming to Achieve

What would success look like for your intervention?

Is it about one of the following justice goals?

• increasing rates of participation, and lowering default rates?
• increasing procedural justice?
• lowering administrative burdens?
• increasing legal capability?
• improving substantive justice outcomes?
• improving social and poverty-related outcomes?

Once you know which outcome you are trying to affect, then you can choose which metric and instrument to use, to measure whether you are having the intended effect.

Step 3: What’s the intervention?

Now that you know what kind of effect you want to have, it’s time to design the strongest possible ‘thing’ to make that impact.

What is your new intervention, that should make the justice system work better? Is it:

• A new product, like a website, guide, court document, app, bot
• A new service, like a clinic, navigator program, legal aid group, office hours, courtroom guide, or other human/virtual ongoing helper?
• A legal, policy, or rule change, like a right to counsel, a simplification of court procedure, a requirement to go through mediation, a judge’s mandatory training in active listening, or a reform of legal professional regulations?
• Or is it something completely different that doesn’t fit into one of those typical categories –a wildcard like a new TikTok legal education campaign?

Whatever it is, be clear about what this new intervention will be, who else has tried to make something similar before, and what you can do to make it as likely to be usable, useful, and engaging as possible. Be clear about how it will discovered by the target users, how they’ll engage with it, and how it will benefit them.

Step 4: How are you messaging it?

The intervention will only be as strong if its intended audience engages with it. How will you message this intervention — so that people will find it & understand it?

What messaging techniques are you using to make people engage with this content and to achieve your outcomes?

In this stage, you can borrow from established research insights about outreach and uptake of new programs — including from other civic efforts, behavioral science heuristics, and lived experiences of legal professional clients and leaders.

Step 5: Make it Visual

There are best practices around the layout & visuals of legal help. Whether it’s a new flier, website, app, bot, or policy — how will you use the power of visual design to make it engage & usable? Follow established design principles and patterns to make your intervention more impactful.

Step 6: Get Your Evaluation Set up

How will you vet and evaluate the intervention, both at early stages when you are still validating and refining it? And at later stages, when you are further downstream? Make sure that you have evaluation at both early stage and late stage established, to know that you are building something that is reaching the impact that you intend.