Understanding Court Users
Utah State Court’s Self-Help Center
Role:
UX Researcher
Duration
8 weeks
A glance:
Conducted user research across four judicial districts to develop detailed court patron archetypes. These insights reshaped how court staff viewed users, leading to more empathetic and user-centered service design.
Process
Discovery
Define
Ideate
Deliver
Discovery
What challenges do court users face?
User Experience starts with Data
While working with the Utah State Court’s Self-Help Center (UTS-SHC), I was part of a team dedicated to providing legal information to court users.
Most litigants in Civil Cases (i.e., Debt Collection, Divorce, Eviction)—over 90%—navigate the legal system without an attorney.
Report from 2023Quantitative data revealed key trends, leading me to conduct user research through site visits and direct engagement with stakeholders, including:
Self-represented Litigants – Understanding their challenges navigating the system through observation
Court Staff – Gaining insight into procedural barriers and workflows through interviews
Legal Aid Organizations – Identifying gaps in available support through issues exploration meeting
Community-Based Organizations – Exploring external resources to assist court users through focus groups
This multi-perspective approach ensured a well-rounded understanding of user needs.
Interviewed and observed 7 district courts across the stateThe correlation of quantitative and qualitative led me to focus on Divorce and Eviction.
Divorce Case Process
Report from 2023
Eviction Case Process
Report from 2023
Key Insights:
Users faced significant confusion and stress navigating court procedures
Court staff lacked a structured understanding of user challenges
Different user groups had distinct pain points (e.g., accessibility, financial limitations, language barriers)
The Challenge
The Problem:
Court patrons, especially self-represented individuals, often struggled with legal processes. Without clear user archetypes, court resources were designed based on assumptions rather than real needs.
Goal:
Bring users to the forefront. Develop detailed user archetypes that humanize the court user experience, guiding service improvements and fostering empathy among court staff.
Define
Who are the court users?
Making sense of that date to define user needs
Affinity Map
After analyzing quantitative and qualitative data, I identified distinct court user archetypes to represent self-represented litigants' diverse needs and challenges.
This process involved:
Finding patterns in the research to group users by common needs and behaviors.
Developing personas that captured key traits, motivations, and pain points.
Defining their legal journey goals to understand what success looks like for them.
Based on research, each persona represents a real-world user type. These aim to clarify who we are designing for and provide a foundation for mapping their experience.
Court User Personas
Ideate
How Can We Visualize the Court User Experience?
Making sense of that date to define user needs
After analyzing quantitative and qualitative data, I identified distinct court user archetypes to represent the diverse needs and challenges of self-represented litigants.
This process involved:
Finding patterns in the research to group users by common needs and behaviors.
Developing personas that captured key traits, motivations, and pain points.
Defining their legal journey goals to understand what success looks like for them.
User Journey Maps
These visualizations showcased each persona’s steps, emotions, and challenges, helping stakeholders empathize with users and prioritize areas for intervention.
Deliver
How do we share these insights effectively?
Presenting findings to drive awareness and action
With the user journeys designed, I shifted focus to effectively presenting the findings. My goal was to ensure that court staff, legal aid organizations, and other stakeholders could easily grasp the insights and take action.
To accomplish this, I:
Created a clear, engaging presentation that walked through key findings and user journeys.
Used storytelling to connect stakeholders emotionally to the court user experience.
Provided actionable recommendations to help decision-makers implement changes.
This presentation was an essential step in translating research into real impact, helping stakeholders understand the barriers users face and empowering them to improve the court experience.
Presentation to Court Staff
Data alone isn’t enough—spreading the importance and findings of user research is a crucial step in shifting the culture to a user-centered
Present to different levels of leadership.
Engage external organizations that work directly with users.
Adapt messaging for different audiences (judges, clerks, policymakers).
Impact
"What I thought would happen versus what actually happened:
Expectation
Leadership will immediately see value of UX and support systemic change.
Everyone will be excited to adopt user personas and data-driven decisions.
Immediate transformation in how courts approach user-centered design.
Reality
Some stakeholders were skeptical, some key decision-makers had breakthroughs
Showing real user impact, I gained incremental buy-in.
It’s a slow process, but each small win builds momentum for long-term culture change
Some of the responses:
“In my 30 years of working in the court, I had never seen a presentation like this about court patrons, it was eye-opening.”
— Court Administrator
“We already do those things; people just don’t want to read.”
— Court Clerk
Small Wins Lead to Big Impact: Minds won't change overnight, but each breakthrough moment matters at any level.