Kickoff workshops looked a lot different in 2019. While we’ve all adapted to the convenience of Miro in this remote working world, I’ll never pass up the chance to channel my inner Bill O’Reilly and do it live.

These initial workshops with Maree ended up being as much a crash course in family law as they were design meetings. No one can design for a space they don’t understand.

Having worked as a paralegal while studying design, I was about as well versed in the legal process as any designer could be. Once I had a grasp of the processes unique to family law, I was able to apply a new lens to my legal consumer experience knowledge base.

Tribe’s subject matter called for a monumental content load. To ensure we were able to confidently axe anything superfluous, I approached the information architecture a little differently.

While my ‘subway’ approach looks like the digital embodiment of a migraine - it is a very powerful map. I created a plug and play webpage ‘module’ which illustrates the depth - and type - of content on any given page. Mapping navigation routes from every page and every CTA to their respective destinations - I was able to see bottlenecks and streamlining opportunities.

Presenting the IA in this way one route type at a time (all layers visible in image for demonstration) meant that Maree was able to understand the structure of the pages within the site, the content within those pages, and the way users were going to interact with that content.

Finding ways to make content-rich websites easily digestible for users requires a higher level of wireframe fidelity than usual. In the case of the Tribe Service Menu - I needed the extra level of fidelity to explore my intended solution and make sure that the component’s hierarchy was workable.

Going high fidelity right off the bat feels like one of the situations where you look to your junior and tell them to avert their eyes, but in this case it allowed for a much easier sell to Maree, and an easy check in with the developer.

The backend of Tribe is really what sets it apart. There was simply no precedent for how a legal e-commerce store would work. Each order that was placed needed to be scrutinised for conflicts of interest and suitability for the client. We also couldn’t legally accept payment until a fixed-term legal retainer was signed. These hurdles meant that no amount of strong-arming would make something like Shopify work for us, so we just made it from scratch.

Powered by a custom API courtesy of our extraordinary developer, we were able to build out the e-commerce functionality and hook it up with our CRM. There’s so much under the hood of this interface that I couldn’t possibly do it justice in a few sentences - so to any hiring managers reading this, I’d love to jump on a call and run through it.

Following the development phase - Tribe was off and running. In working so closely with the developer throughout the build, I was able to ensure both myself and Maree had the ability to tweak, add and change content across the site.

In utilising the user data from Google Analytics, I made iterative changes to the site over time - something I continue to do. The backend structure allowed for easy SEO optimization and seeing the numbers climb across the board each month is a testament to a considered and well-executed site build.