Problem

We’d had some feedback from customers that the guidance pages attached to our wills weren’t as clear as they could be. We wanted to minimise the risk that someone didn’t sign their will, or signed it incorrectly.

Project

As one of my first design projects at Farewill, I took on the challenge of clarifying the instructions and signature pages of our will. It was a small project with a big potential impact – well designed content could make the difference between someone signing their will correctly or not. It took about a week.

Team

Me – sole product designer, working as part of an in-house cross-functional product team including: PM (Tam), developers (Helena, Emily)

Process

We discussed whether it would be valuable to run a round of user tests on the existing will instructions page. We agreed we wouldn’t – we felt we had enough insight from the team and customer feedback to be able to make improvements. We felt rapid improvement, and testing the new designs, would be better. It felt like a pragmatic approach.

I reviewed the existing will design and invited others to do so. Collectively, we identified a number of areas for improvement.

  • The title ‘Instructions for signing’ was an unclear call to action – what should the user do, and why is it important?
  • The ‘Step 1’, ‘Step 2’ headings didn’t reflect what had to be done – a lack of clear headings made the content harder to follow
  • The content wasn’t entirely in a sensible order – the instruction to print in black and white came further down the page than ‘print your will’.
  • The guidance about witnessing was hard to follow.

Farewill's old will guidance

Above: Farewill’s old will guidance

Here are some of the things we changed:

  • Page title to better reflect the purpose of the page and it’s importance (‘here’s how to make it legal’)
  • Headings to make the page more readable and reflect the jobs to be done
  • Bullet points to break up blocks of text
  • Clearer guidance for choosing witnesses
  • Readability tweaks like improved contrast and line height

Farewill's new will guidance

Above: updated designs

Outcomes

The instructions were so clear

…feedback from a customer

At the time, we didn’t measure the success of the project quantitatively. But we received glowing feedback from customers about the clarity of the new instructions page, and future research has helped other teams improve the page further.

Reflections

  • It’s satisfying to work occasionally on small, self-contained design challenges
  • An early draft had the title “You’re nearly finished - here’s how to make your will legal”. Our CEO Dan pointed out that “You’re nearly finished” is an ambiguous phrase where death is concerned. Once he said it, it felt so obvious. It’s that sort of reason I never design in isolation.
  • I’m not sure if I achieved it, but I think there can be beauty in clear, usable content

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