Expunge Assist
Overview
Expunge Assist is a project from Hack For LA, a non-profit organization that builds and launches open-source civic products and apps aimed to help the Los Angeles population. Hack for LA is the Los Angeles chapter of Code For America.
Project Background
Expunge Assist is a tool aimed to make the criminal expungement process in California a little easier for those with qualifying records, giving them a second chance to rebuild the life they want to live. Expunge Assist’s letter generator helps users seeking expungement by answering questions that would then be used to form a letter to send to the judge with their request for record expungement.
Role: UI Designer
Team:
3 Designers (including me)
4 UX Researchers
2 Developers
Duration: April 2022 - Ongoing
Joining the project
When I joined the Expunge Assist team, there was a lot of moving pieces going on all at once. Their lead and only designer was transitioning out of the project, leaving me temporarily as the only designer. The website was just wrapping up it’s first rounds of internal usability testing.
Usability Testing Results
The user testing was conducted by the UX Research team. There was a total of two usability tests planned to correct major and reoccurring issues before presenting and testing the product with the target audience.
The first round of user testing was with seven participants who were other Hack For LA volunteers outside of the Expunge Assist project.
Some of the major recurring pain points with the initial product included:
Users had problems finding key information and difficulty navigating the site
Lack of flexibility and options for people with different situations
Updating the Navigation & Footer
A major pain point from the usability test results was that testers found it difficult to navigate the website and difficulty finding relevant information. Some feedback that we received that contributed to the difficulty was the navigation links in the footer being “small and almost invisible.” Another factor I noticed was that the top navigation bar had no distinction from the rest of the website, causing it to blend in and made it difficult to find.
Before
After
I designed an upgraded navigation and footer, and a mobile navigation bar, slightly increasing the font size and bolding the text. I added a white background to the navigation bar making it stand out and made it fixed to the top of the screens allowing quick access to the menu while scrolling through the website.
Updating Landing Page
Users felt like the information on the Expunge Assist website was not enough. They were confused on who the target audience was, not sure what the actual letter generator looked like, and also were not familiar with the criminal expungement process. When asked to find more information on these topics, it wasn’t clear to them where to go to find it and when they did they felt like it was lacking.
Before
Wireframes
Me and the other designer on the team had our own design review where we shared our iterations and selected which sections to add to the updated landing page. Purple highlighted are the sections chosen to move forward
Below are the wireframes that included:
Adding a common FAQ to the landing page would give more information on what expungement was and who was qualified.
A visual representation of what the letter generator would look like so users would know what to expect when they start
Added a representation of the finished outcome of using Expunge Assist’s letter generator
De-emphasized the Partnerships section by moving the section to the bottom of the page
Working in Additional Copy from Content Team
The design team also worked with the content team to better clarify the process, the purpose of Expunge Assist, and the outcome. After receiving the additional copy the content team provided we felt it was necessary to break up the information to make it more digestible. We went through the same process of designing wireframes and sharing our work in a design review to decide the best formatting and order of the new content.
After
Adding Flexibility - Parenting Form
One major pain point uncovered during the usability test was a lack of flexibility in sections of the letter generator. This pain point was especially noticed on the page where the users answer how being a parent made an impact on their lives and how expungement of their criminal record could benefit their family.
The original form had no option for parents who had more than one child or who had a child that was younger than one year old.
Before
Iterations
I designed three iterations with different ways for potential users with multiple children of all ages could enter their children’s names and age.
Drop-down selection where people can choose if their child was a year older or still a toddler (Month(s)
Add a name and age button so users with multiple children can list more than one
Cancel button to delete forms was accidentally added
Radio buttons to select between Year(s) old or Month(s) old.
Users can type in the input box and describe themselves the age of their children
Pivot
While designing the different ways to add more flexibility to the Parenting page, questions came up about the necessity of a user adding their children’s name and age to the letter in general.
Would a person feel comfortable sharing that information?
How would the name and age of a person’s child be relevant to proving the user’s character in clearing a criminal record?
These questions made me take a step back and look into some of the prior research and found past volunteers on the project also had these questions. To get a better idea of the type of user who would be using Expunge Assist, I took a look at the personas that were used at the beginning of the project.
Referencing Past Research
The personas used were from a similar product that assisted in clearing criminal records called Clear My Record from Code For America. Privacy and legitimacy were major themes that were important to the personas. Interviewed users did not feel comfortable with the possibility of family or friends finding out about attempts to clear their record and they wanted to be sure that the tool they were using was “legit”.
With the consideration of this additional information, I decided to move forward with a more stripped-down page only asking for necessary information for users who may not have felt comfortable sharing such private information about their children.
To be continued…
The project is ongoing and currently preparing for the second round of internal user testing to validate our changes to the initial MVP.
I am currently contributing to working on:
Documenting Expunge Assist’s UX Design team onboarding and workflow
Updating mobile wireframes
Organizing and improving the existing design system
Be sure to come back and check out the updates to the project!
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