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USING DESIGN TO IMPROVE KM YOUR MILEAGE MAY VARY CASE STUDY STIKEMAN ELLIOTT We had just started a project and written a long, wordy requirements document. Jumping into the new process, we threw that document out and invited Kate to facilitate a communications workshop with everyone on the team so we could start anew. First, we identified the personas of the various types of users who'd use the system being designed. Most technology teams understand their users generally, but they may not know the nature of the different practice areas in detail, the roles that different users play in various tasks and activities, or the reasons and motivations behind their actions. We wanted to provide a means for the technology team to develop this depth of understanding. This is something KM teams can do on any given project, especially through the use of personas. Personas and Design Points This person is responsible for managing all CLE events and is the heaviest user of the CLE calendar process and system. They support administrative assistants and lawyers with respect to recording mandatory CLE. This person may or may not be a lawyer and may or may not be tech-savvy. As a result, the interface needs to be user friendly and intuitive. This person needs to use the CLE calendar to support their administrative role in tracking their lawyers' attendance at CLE events and providing that information to the law society. This work is procedure-based, so making information easy to understand and locate will help this person adopt the new system. This person will need clearly defined processes and procedures. This person may need to access the CLE calendar to see upcoming CLE events that are applicable to them, to find materials and information for the purpose of tracking their mandatory CLE requirements and maintaining a proper record, and to find past materials that need to be updated for a new session. A lawyer accessing the calendar may range in seniority, but it is more likely to be a younger associate. The interface needs to be user friendly and intuitive. An ideal design process can involve more than 100+ UCD techniques and components, but only a subset of these are useful within our industry. There are five phases in the recommended design framework (discovery, design, develop, test and deploy). Within each, up to 20 different lawyercentric design techniques may be used, depending on project and resource needs. Rather than list all 20 design techniques, here are the top five from our case study. You can implement them today to embed some of this design thinking into your IT/KM project life cycles. 1. Perform a simple analysis of the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats (SWOT) of your UX. With a quick health check, you and your technology team can understand the SWOT of your current user interface or full user experience. This will give you a handy reference for prioritizing improvements throughout your design and development process. "The more a team understands the design problem, the easier it is to arrive at a greater solution and the less resistance they'll face." — Jared Spool, User Interface Engineering

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