How design thinking can improve client experiences

Law firms should use the principles of design thinking to better understand their clients’ needs and develop new ways to deliver legal products and services, writes Trish Carroll.

When it comes to law firm innovation, the chatter always puts innovation and technology together as if one cannot happen without the other. But is that right? Not necessarily. What got me thinking about this was a TED talk given by Doug Dietz, an industrial designer with GE Healthcare who designed a beautiful, perfectly functioning MRI machine. The new MRI machine represented two years of Doug and his team’s work and they were justifiably proud of the final product.

So proud, in fact, that Doug went to the first hospital in which the MRI machine was installed to see how it was going. Instead of being thrilled with what he saw, Doug was shocked – as a young girl and her parents walked towards the MRI machine, he saw the absolute terror (and tears) in the girl’s eyes and concern on her parents’ faces. The MRI technician took one look at the family and called for an anaesthetist because he knew sedation was the only way the child was going to get through the experience.

A devastated Doug decided to do everything he could to make the experience a much more pleasant one. But how? He knew GE would not provide significant funding to redesign the MRI machine, so he needed to think creatively about what could be done.

Think outside the box

Doug enrolled in an executive education course on design thinking at Stanford’s d.school. Design thinking is a methodology used by designers to solve complex problems and find desirable answers for clients. The design mindset focuses on solutions and actions that create a preferred outcome. This way of thinking draws on logic, imagination, intuition and systemic reasoning to explore all possibilities and create desired outcomes that benefit the user; in Doug’s case, this is the young patient, and for law firm managers it is their clients.

The d.school experience gave Doug the tools, frameworks and confidence to approach his problem from a human-centred design perspective. As a result of Doug learning these new skills, he and his team transformed the MRI machine into a children’s adventure story so the MRI resembled something you would expect at Disneyland, not in a hospital, and the technicians became more like those fun people at Disneyland, too. They had scripts to lead young patients through the adventure. The MRI machines were transformed into a space ship, a pirate ship and an underwater wonderland. [Hear Doug tell his story at   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jajduxPD6H4]

There are now hundreds of the new, fun MRI machines operating in the US and the number of children requiring sedation has gone from 80 per cent to infinitesimal.

What about law firms?

When you think about the experience your clients have when they work with you, or your firm, is it possible your clients are feeling anxious. If so, do you understand the cause of their anxiety?

One of the surprising aspects of Doug’s story is that what the child and her parents were anxious about was different from what Doug expected. He thought they would be worried about the outcome of the MRI, how much it cost, whether it would be covered by insurance, taking time off work to accompany the child to hospital and those types of things. Instead, their overwhelming concern was about how they could help their daughter get through the MRI experience without being traumatised.

When your clients are facing difficult situations, how well do you make the experience as pleasant as possible for them? Remember that a client’s experience is based on every interaction they have with your firm and, when matters last for months and even years, it makes it all the more important to consciously design the process to be as consistently pleasant as possible. Yet it is an unusual law firm that structures every aspect of the way it operates to enhance the client experience in a way that makes it consistently pleasant. So maybe it is time for this type of design overhaul to occur.

The Australasian Legal Practice Management Association’s 2016 research into the Changing Legal Landscape noted that truly innovative firms were focused on apps, artificial intelligence, legal process outsourcing and Lean Six Sigma process improvements. The 2017 research bemoans law firms not valuing creativity, even though they believe it is a prerequisite for innovation.

Perhaps human-centred design thinking might be what is needed to kick start creativity and give people frameworks and skills that will breed a culture of creativity that enables everyone in the firm, and the firm’s clients, to participate in creating the type of experience that negates anxiety and makes working together more fun.

Few of us will be lucky enough to attend Stanford’s d.school, but there is plenty of free information on the web about design thinking principles. This link contains a crash course in design thinking produced by Stanford: https://dschool.stanford.edu/resources-collections/a-virtual-crash-course-in-design-thinking.

To get you started, here are the five stages of design thinking – Empathise, Define, Ideate, Prototype and Test.

1. Empathise

First up, you need to have an empathic understanding of the problem you are trying to solve. This entails observing, engaging and empathising with people to understand their situation and motivations, as well as gaining a deeper personal understanding of the issues involved.

2. Define

Using the information you gathered during the Empathise stage, you can then analyse your observations and define the core problems that you and your team have identified up to this point.

3. Ideate

Now you are ready to start generating ideas. You and your team can start to identify new solutions to the problem you have identified, while look for innovative ways of viewing the problem.

4. Prototype

This step involves producing scaled down versions of the new product or service that your team has earmarked in the Ideate phase. These prototypes can be shared and tested within the team itself. This process should identify any constraints or problems with the new product or service and begin to create an informed perspective on what the real users think of the new solution.

5. Test

The fifth and final phase sees the new idea being rigorously tested. These results can be used to address any problems or refine the product of service.

These steps are merely a starting point for a process that requires commitment and time. However, experimenting with some of d.school’s thinking will be great for teamwork, boosting creativity and generating energy and ideas. If all else fails, you can always think about sedating your clients if eliminating anxiety using your new ideas fail!

Trish Carroll is the principal of Galt Advisory, a firm focused on helping law firms devise and implement successful marketing and business development strategies. She can be contacted at trish@galtadvisory.com.au