Manage cases in a simple, accessible and efficient way

Overview

The Judicial case manager is part of a £1 billion programme involving over 50 projects to change and improve the Courts and Tribunals Service to bring new technology and modern ways of working.

Our role was to create a user interface that would enable and support Judges and other members of the judiciary, working within the reformed services to manage their cases in a more efficient way.

Balsamiq mockups to tease out requirements with Judges

My process

I started designing with low-fidelity prototypes which consisted of sticky notes and hand-drawn sketches which helped brainstorm.

Balsamiq helped me quickly create rough concepts to test scenarios with judges.

Later, I created hi-fidelity mockups using Sketch to get an overall look and feel for the interface and to design a collection of reusable components for the service.

Judicial Case Manager research and planning

A collection of sketches, sticky notes, planning and research around a typical user journey for both appellant and judge.

Fig. 1 - Sketches and research notes
Fig. 2 - Sticky notes capturing findings
Fig. 3 - Shows a complete user journey for a judge
Fig. 4 - Shows what a judge needs to do to progress cases

Questions to the appellant and answers from a judge user flow design concepts

Case details landing page design for a judge viewing a case

Dashboard design to show a list of cases a judge could be working on

Prototyping in code

Later, I moved Sketch designs into prototype code. This took time to ramp up but once I did, it was very fast to prototype new features.

Presenting an interactive, realistic user experience helped to spot usability failures within the service and ensured user needs were at the centre of every design decision.

Research and analysis

Research visits around England included 12 locations, 25 participants and over 104 hours of research. We also worked with individual service lines to use their research saving us a lot of time and duplication of effort.

From our research we defined:

a set of user needs for each service line
a core set of user needs for the Judicial case manager
a set of personas describing our main user types
understanding of the current user journeys for each service line

User testing with a Judge in Guildford Magistrates’ Court and Family Court

Collaborative delivery

I worked with product owners, business analysts, user researchers, content designers, developers and delivery managers adopting Agile principles. Every individual brought their own set of skills and expertise, to transform the Courts and Tribunals system.

Financial Remedy user journey page designs

Continuous Online Resolution (COR) user journey page designs

Photography

Playing a big part in designing a service for the Judiciary was visiting various court rooms to see how cases are handles by Judges. I was able to capture Lady Justice and the Central Criminal Court building which was a great opportunity to use my trusty camera.