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Case Alerts for Attorneys
By. Jennifer Christensen
MerusCase is a case management system for attorneys in the SaaS B2B tech space.
Jump to a specific phase of my design process, within this case study
Table of Contents:
Project Background
One of our competitors has a feature in which users can input important information into a case. Then, as soon as any user clicks into the case, a red alert window appears, displaying the important information. The purpose is to alert the user of information that is absolutely vital to that case, and should not be missed. We get many feature requests asking for similar features.
Why Now?
One of our larger customers reported that important information listed in a case file was missed by their users. As a result, their firm had to pay a very large fine.
Main Problem:
Law firms want a convenient way to alert users about important case-related information. One of our competitors already has this functionality but the alert covers the whole screen.
Challenges and Constraints
Make the popup alert extremely noticeable, and not able to be missed by users. However, don’t make it annoying. Alert fatigue and frustration can occur if the user is seeing alerts all the time.
Time - Since our users had been asking for this feature for a long time, and a large customer was asking for this feature to be created as soon as possible, there was pressure to get this feature released quickly.
My Role
Sole Product Designer
Tools Used
Figma, Zeplin, Zoom and Slack
Discovery Phase
First, I met with the stakeholders on this project:
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VP of Product
Head of Engineering
Head of Customer Success
QA Engineer
In a previous role at this same company, I worked on the customer success team. I had prior knowledge of users asking for this specific feature, and what their current workflow might be.
We discussed various ways this alert feature could be implemented, but landed on a small red ‘snackbar’ notification in the bottom right corner of the screen.
Why did we choose a "snackbar" notification covering a small portion of the screen?
1. Less disruptive to users if it’s in the bottom right corner and not taking up the whole screen
2. Easy/quick to code
However, the snackbar won’t go away unless the user manually clicks to close it - this forces users to look at it, no matter where they are in the case. If they click into another tab of the case, the snackbar popup will stay on the screen until the user acknowledges it.
Design Phase
I created a quick mockup and working prototype in Figma. Normally I would have started the process with sketching, but this flow only necessitated a few screens. Creating the Figma mockup/prototype did not take long - only a few hours.
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Since we are a fully remote team, I created a short 4-minute video over Zoom demonstrating the first prototype, and explaining my thought process. I sent it to the internal stakeholders and asked for feedback:
Feedback from Internal Stakeholders:
Include some sort of title on the "snackbar" popup, noting what it is. Otherwise, the user would just see a jumble of text in this box, without context.
Before:
No title or descriptor on the popup
After:
"Special Handling" title on the popup
I called the feature "Special Handling Comments" because users were already accustomed to entering text into the “Comments” section of cases. Therefore users might intuitively go to the "Comments" section if they want to add more case information. Stakeholders agreed this was a good choice.
Validation Phase
Why Didn't We Do User Testing?
Our team had numerous detailed feature requests from our users, requesting this specific functionality. Therefore, we were confident that this general design would meet users’ needs.
In the interest of time, we decided instead to demo the prototype over Zoom to multiple law firms that previously requested this functionality.
Feedback From Users at Law Firms:
All wanted the same general functionality. But with slight variations:
1. Larger Firms - Mass update functionality - Wanted to put the same popup message into all cases that had one specific party.
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2. Smaller Firms - Did not want the permission level limited to just administrators. They wanted all users to add special handling comments to cases. Smaller firms are more likely to have employees who wear many different ‘hats’ at the firm, and frequently update cases.
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3. Allow hyperlinks inside the text box.
These are only a few examples. It would be impossible to please everyone, and at this point we felt we explored the problem space thoroughly.
None of the firms we interviewed wanted to change the design of the "snackbar" comments box, or general functionality. Success!
Solution and Final Prototype
We decided to keep it simple, and keep the main functionality that most firms liked:
Administrators at the firm can add special handling comments to cases. We added the ability for users to put hyperlinks inside the special handling comments box. A popup showing the comments that the administrator added, will appear each time users enter that case. The popup will not go away unless the user clicks it to view the full comments, or clicks to x out of the popup.
Final Flow Example:
How Is Our Solution Different From Our Competitors?
The special handling comments are housed in a red popup box but it does not cover the full screen. The competitor’s feature has the popup covering the entire screen, which could cause confusion or cover important information. Our feature still allows the user to see other information on the screen, without missing the special handling comments in red, on the bottom right of the screen.
Feature Release and Conclusion
As a former customer support team member for MerusCase, I had insight into what customers might want to see for educational material, and questions they might ask about the feature.
I worked with the marketing team at MerusCase and wrote the blog post for the “official” press release - you can view it at the link below. The article includes screenshots and a “how-to” section explaining how to utilize this feature.
I created a 5-minute instructional video for customers, explaining how to use the feature - this video is embedded directly into the blog post article. This article was sent out to all customers.
After only a few days, positive comments started coming in from firms. We received minimal negative feedback. The following feedback is from a 13-user law firm located in California:
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In June 2023, eight months after this feature was released, I was curious how many users were still utilizing this feature and interacting with it. The purpose of checking this data, was to ensure that we continue to create features that are genuinely helpful to people long-term.
We tracked three actions related to this feature - editing, closing, and viewing the comments.
The graph above from Mixpanel shows that every business day, between 500-600 users are still interacting with the feature in some way, and it is definitely being utilized inside our product.
What I Learned: Know When to Stop
The main challenge with designing this feature, was that most law firms wanted slightly different things. It was important to find a happy medium between trying to please users, and release the feature in a timely manner. If we added additional functionality, it would also take longer for our engineering team to code. The solution we created satisfied all users and provided the minimum functionality they were asking for.
Understanding when to “stop” the design process and create the final designs, is important. Otherwise, a designer could go on forever, gaining more user feedback and constantly iterating!