Jusbrasil Lawsuit Search App
In Brazil, Jusbrasil collects, organizes and share official public information, helping millions of brazilians have access to legal notices. By the end of 2019, Jusbrasil had a product called Escritório Online (Online Office in pt-br), a SaaS application that focused on helping lawyers manage their clients and other stuff (yeah, it was some kind of a CRM but with more stuff).
A mobile app version of the Escritório Online was also built, but it never made any success, the usage was very low, store ratings were terrible, and most of the users trying to enter the app were not even lawyers. It was about that time that we decided to deep dive on a research.
Plan of Attack
Discover
Call users
Quantitative Research
Workshop
Define & Ideate
Affinity diagram
Problem statement
Hypothesis definition
User flow
Design
Information architecture
Wireframing
Visual Design
Interactive prototype
Output
Usability testing
Review after feedback
Ship 🚀
Getting to know our users
We moved right away to getting as much information we could get, this was made in 3 different ways:
Calling users who used the app recently - and users who tried to login (adding a phone number was an optional information when creating a Jusbrasil profile, so we had a bunch of users phone numbers).
By a quantitative research: we launched a quick research focused on lawyer type users who accessed Escritório Online web version through their mobile devices and another one for non-lawyers who entered Jusbrasil through their phones.
Also, we had a workshop where we invited a few layers and non-lawyers to talk about mobile experience. We asked questions about how they used their phones in the daily basis to access legal information
After a couple weeks, we had enough data to start sorting and defining behaviors, our focus? Define what was the job our mobile users needed to be done. At the end, it came down to a affinity diagram similar to the following.
What the real problem was
It was not a surprise when we discovered that we weren’t actually helping the users at any point. The app had a lot of features and they were all designed to lawyers, but the lawyers would mostly use the web version on desktop to manage clients, while our non-lawyers were the most present on mobile. And they were not finding what they needed.
”
Users need to check their lawsuits on their phones so they are always aware of the information they need before going to the court or talk with their lawyers.
”
It was not a surprise when we discovered that we weren’t actually helping the users at any point. The app had a lot of features and they were all designed to lawyers, but the lawyers would mostly use the web version on desktop to manage clients, while our non-lawyers were the most present on mobile. And they were not finding what they needed.
Building a new app
Redesigning the old app would be too much work, so the decision was to create a new one. A new app would focus on bringing legal information to everyone - lawyers and non-lawyers - in an easy and simple way. We rushed to creating an MVP as fast as possible so we could test it and validate our hypothesis.
At that time we already had an idea of how it would work, and how we were going to get revenue from it.
An easier way to check on their lawsuits
We decided on creating the simplest solution possible, so it didn’t cost too much of the team’s effort. The solution would have a simple search where users would be able to search lawsuits by an ID - researches showed us the lawyers usually use the ID for a faster search - or a person’s name - non-lawyers don’t usually know the lawsuit ID.
Flow would bring the users to the lawsuit page where they would check all the information. Further iterations would add a button to “Follow lawsuit” where users would pay to be notified every time the lawsuit got any new activity.
On an even further iteration the newest activity would be also be behind a paywall. That’s how Jusbrasil usually monetizes products.
Aftermath
We analyzed data and user behavior for about a month after the MVP was launched to check for any possible iterations and corrections we could made. The app was a huge success for Jusbrasil since the very first moment, the UI was simple and intuitive for non-lawyers and the user count grew immensely in the first months:
Here is some data 3 months after launch:
✅ 15k users
✅ 5 star rating on App Store
✅ 4 star rating on Play Store
My role
On this project I owned the entire design process, guiding it from concept to completion. This involved actively participating in user interviews, facilitating team activities, and meticulously crafting the final application. As the project lead, I also helped the Tech Lead manage a team of 3 developers, ensuring everyone had enough info about the project and its impact to the company.
Skills
User Research
Prototyping
User Testing
Figma
