User Research Drives Canada's First Competitive Legal Literacy Platform
1. Context
Addressing Canada's legal literacy gap through competitive engagement
Canadians remain disconnected from domestic legal developments that directly impact their lives, often more familiar with American legal drama than Canadian Supreme Court decisions. This disconnect creates an opportunity to leverage the competitive nature inherent in legal professional culture to drive educational engagement.
As UX lead on a four-person team, I designed a 0-to-1 competitive prediction platform that transforms legal case outcomes into social competition, creating sustained engagement with Canadian case law through natural professional rivalry.
2. Research & Discovery
Campus interviews revealed fundamental assumptions about professional interface preferences were wrong
Six law student interviews on campus uncovered critical insights about legal professional behavior that challenged our initial design approach. We assumed legal professionals preferred minimal, "all business" interfaces focused on efficient information consumption. We were totally wrong.
The interviews revealed the opposite: students consistently requested we leaned further into engaging graphics, increased gamification, and social competitive features. They demonstrated genuine passion for the thought of competing on case predictions, suggesting that rivalry could successfully grow a userbase.
We also evaluated products like LexisNexis that function as a legal research database, but adding gamification into the mix.
3. Problem Definition
Legal education failed to leverage competitive behaviors inherent in legal pros' culture
Traditional legal education emphasized passive content consumption over active engagement, missing opportunities to utilize the naturally competitive nature we see in legal professionals. The challenge became designing educational value within a competitive environment rather than conventional enterprise-software-style design patterns.
These younger law students wanted visual engagement and gamified experiences that contradicted our assumptions about the people within the legal profession. This required reframing the approach from individual learning tools to social competitive platforms that educated and entertained.
4. solution strategy
Law student interviews validated competitive engagement while revealing design preferences
The design strategy focused on transforming active Canadian legal case into prediction competitions where users compete as they learn.
Key strategic decisions included emphasizing ranking systems while still displaying personal metrics and integrating case information directly into prediction UI.
We designed a comprehensive achievement and ranking system that transformed case predictions into gamified patterns and a competitive, cooperative userbase.
The accolades system, legal specialization tracking, and league-based competition was key to our hypothesis that competitive user engagement could serve educational purposes rather than replacing substantive content.
6. Validation & Testing
Student feedback validated the visual style that bolstered the gamification experience
The six campus interviews validated our gamification approach, with students responding enthusiastically to competitive prediction mechanics and providing specific feedback on feature prioritization and visual design preferences. Testing confirmed that traditional assumptions about professional interface design were incorrect.
Students preferred engaging graphics over minimal layouts and requested enhanced gamification rather than reduced visual stimuli. The guerilla testing process proved that competitive mechanics could successfully drive legal education AND engagement. This project gave us confidence that a userbase for a product like this existed and was ready to be engaged.
7. impact & Reflection
Successful validation of gamified legal education with room for growth
The prototype demonstrated that gamification can address legal literacy gaps by leveraging the competitive nature of legal pros. Guerilla user testing validated our core approach while providing specific direction that informed our understanding of the demographic.
The project proved that testing user assumptions was critical for product success. The discovery that legal professionals embraced gamified, visually engaging interfaces challenged assumptions that traditional B2B approaches didn't mean product-market fit.
Looking back: I wish we'd have maintained our momentum when developing this. In the age of vibe-coding, it's easier than ever to create a real MVP to run comprehensive tests, pitch to investors in the legal space, and create a legitimate product for an underserved demographic.
