Work

Messages and groups

See the reminder about the expiration of a contract in the personal calendar (Gmail, Outlook) if it was created manually, Access Linte Hub and access the contract, Check the expiration date of the contract, Send emails to those involved in the contract to renegotiate, redefine or terminate the contract, Get feedback from counterparties and the contract in the product, Take the required action in the contract.

Context

The product

This project was developed for a desktop application, Linte Hub, created by Linte, a startup (law tech, B2B, SaaS). In it, users create and respond to and manage legal demands, in addition to managing contracts.

Before this project, Linte Hub already had a message board for each legal request opened on the platform. Negotiation of legal terms when dealing with legal requests is a huge part of Linte’s business.

The problem

During contract negotiation, people need to talk about terms and clauses. Even though Linte had a message board, people weren't engaging as many people as they wanted in conversations or exchanging all the necessary messages through this channel.

Some were using email to deal with sensitive matters, some were pasting email threads in the message board to keep a history, and some were not using the board at all.

People were leaving the product to do other tasks, which could be one of the causes of the engagement on the platform not growing.

Business and product outcomes

At this moment, the product outcome was based on engagement raise and the business outcome related to MRR growth.

As we noticed the engagement was being affected by the negotiation of contracts, we decided to prioritize resolving this problem. The main objective was to maintain people in the product for more time and help them to bring more people to it, raising engagement.

My role

In this project, I've actively contributed to all stages, working directly with a Product Manager, a front-end and a back-end developer.

At discovery, I planned, conducted, and analyzed data from interviews and quantitative surveys, participated in the creation of the opportunity tree, led the ideation with the team, developed components and the interface with the front-end developer, and contributed to the definition of metrics.

Discovery

How has people's experience been when trading on Linte?

Communicating on Linte: insights

During our Continuous Discovery routine, we observed how people were feeling when communicating about legal requests on Linte. Beyond that, we consulted past interviews, the existing opportunity tree, talked to internal stakeholders and were able to access opinions such as:

👨 "I don't use the message board cause I can't talk to parties in confidence."

👩🏻 "I don't involve external people here. I just copy and paste the emails here to have a history.

👵 "I wanted that in this chat of requests, there was an internal exchange of messages."

🧑🏾 "I wish I could use bold, italic, emojis, and direct my comments."

Opportunities

We mapped the opportunities based on what we’ve heard and decided to address the following:

I want to negotiate everything that is necessary, involving whoever is necessary, safely.

I want to restrict an external person's access to internal company conversations.

I want to exchange messages with people involved in a legal request.

Ideation

How could we make people feel better while exchanging messages on Linte hub?

Solution

We wanted a solution that made people exchange messages on Linte as they are accustomed to doing in other softwares, feel safe to exchange sensitive messages, and centralize negotiation information.

Sketches and ideas

To arrive at a result focused on the pain raised, some sketches were made. In the most relevant, I evaluated what could be done to meet the solution scope.

How was the solution before this project:

Sketch 01

Here, messages between people inside and outside the company would be separated by tabs, using the structure we already had in the product, which would bring the reuse of components and less effort (time!).

Sketch 02

The chat would work like other messaging applications so that people would be familiar with the interface and learn to send messages faster.

Sketch 03

In this idea, the request information would be on the side nav so that there would be more vertical space for the chat.

Concept and scoping

We decided to have message groups for each demand and divided the project into functional stages that could already add value as they were delivered.

Creating message groups

To exchange sensitive messages, people could create message groups. The default group would work like the old message board, so that people could adapt faster.

Chat improvement

Responsive dialog boxes, rich text toolbar, directly reply to a chat message and delete/edit a message within 30 seconds of sending in chat.

Tag people in conversations (@name)

It would be possible to tag anyone while typing a message and they would be notified by email.

Rabbit holes

For the first version, we weren't concerned about managing notifications and more complex permission rules.

No-go's

Intentionally, we wouldn't create a notification central, like an inbox or something like that, and huge UI changes to fit the scope.

Delivery

User flow

A user flow was created to help us to determine the information architecture and scenarios.

Wireframes and prototype (medium fidelity)

Wireframes were made to map components, test it with internal stakeholders, and let the engineering team be free to do POCs while the high-fidelity screens were made.

Solution delivered

The solution delivered brought Groups to the feature so that people feel safe exchanging messages on Linte.

So that they feel comfortable and learn to use the new feature quickly, it looks like other messaging tools, bringing text formatting and tagging people so that conversations are organized and easy to understand.

The default group, working like the old message board, came with the intention of making the transition to using groups more subtle and saving people from creating a first group in all system demands. We owe the requested emojis, but one day they will arrive! ☺️

Handoff and specs

The handoff had new components and a rearrangement of the message board. I've tried to make the new specs as straightforward as possible so that the programming team could develop everything smoothly and maintain consistency.

UI and components

Some components were reused in this release, as new components were needed like the dialog boxes, and the message box (including the rich text toolbar). In addition, new email notifications have also been created.

Metrics

We built the metrics according to the Goals, Signals, and Metrics framework. Additionally, chat action events were added to Mixpanel upon delivery so we could track usage data.

Goals

What we want a user to say about us after using this feature:
"Now I can exchange messages with more areas of my company on Linte."
"I feel safer inviting people who don't work at my company to talk on Linte."
"I can find information about demand on Linte, centrally, whenever I need it."

Signals

Behaviors or attitudes that can indicate that our objectives were achieved:
More areas participate in conversations in the new chat and requests.
External participants start accessing Linte more frequently.
People stop using their emails as communication history.

Metrics

Trackable metrics that we'll monitor:
Participants outside the legal area send 50% more messages on Linte.
External participants increases by 50% in the first month of the feature.
80% of a person's messages are on Linte 3 months after the chat launch.

Outcomes and learnings

We've learned, mostly, to reframe the problems. Before this delivery, we believed that people did not exchange messages on Linte due to system permissions and that, therefore, we would have to deal with the complexity of reviewing user roles.

The message board was one of the most used features on Linte, and, following product usage data, we couldn't imagine gaining engagement at this point in people's journeys.