WK Cheetah

Challenge

IntelliConnect, Wolters Kluwer Legal & Regulatory Solutions' flagship legal research product had many issues:

  • Product was not designed to support customers' needs, instead it reflected the politics of the organization

  • Low levels of customer satisfaction resulted in a retention rate of 84% – sales team expended significant effort just to replace customers

  • Revenue growth was driven by price increases, rather than new customer acquisition, which generated friction with customers

Action

Secured a 3x investment in design from executive leadership to align product to customer needs:

  • Oversaw conception of a new product that re-imagined the legal research experience using an outside-in, customer-centric process

  • Designed in collaboration with our customers to create a product that supports and streamlines their legal research workflow

  • Focused on optimizing experience for context and task – making sure that whatever a user might need is available at the point of need

  • Led the creation of a simple, elegant, seamless experience that is comparable to our customers' favorite consumer websites

More about the process

Result

Cheetah, the new product, is:

  • Aligned to users' needs and goals

  • Driving print to digital migration for print "hold-outs"

  • Generating 15+% increases in sales/subscriptions for customer migrating from legacy platform

  • Voted Best New Product for 2015 by legal professionals

Cheetah Dashboard

•Practice Area Dashboards provide Topical / Practice-Area specific
presentation of content

•Cheetah’s design focuses on find-ability, with dashboard quick links to
high‑value content

•Users can easily customize their dashboard to surface the content important
them for 1-click access

•Cheetah provides global access to History, Work Lists & Favorites

 

Search Results

•Clean, clear presentation of search results, including a color-coded indicator
of document type

•Post-search filters provide six key facets to narrow results: Topic, Document
Types, Governing Acts, Jurisdiction, Court, Entity & Role

•A persistent toolbar provides contextual ability to print, email, download,
and add to favorites or worklist

 

The Read Experience

Optimized for on-screen reading, blurring the line between desktop & e-reader

•Design maximizes screen real estate available for content display

•Table of Contents presentation reflects the structure of document, providing
a seamless reading experience

•Users have access to the Table of Contents from anywhere in the document,
resulting in easy navigation to any section or chapter

•Generous click-targets make for a good experience on mobile devices

 

Responsive Design

Optimized for a seamless experience across multiple devices

 

Usability Testing

Central to the concept of designing Cheetah in collaboration with our customers is the usability testing process. Using an iterative design/test methodology, we ensured that Cheetah is closely aligned to our customers’ needs, goals and behaviors, eliminating friction in the legal research process that historically prevented users from completing their research efficiently.

You can see the power of this methodology in the following heat map, which illustrates the progression of the design over the first three rounds of usability testing:

 

The heat map shows the design’s success/failure in enabling users to complete tasks. Each square represents a user, and the colors illustrate the performance of the design:

  • red = fail

  • orange = struggle

  • yellow = some hesitation

  • green = complete success

  • white squares indicate that the task was not tested

With each round of usability testing, and the associated modifications, the design improved and users became more successful (more green).