Enhancing Legal Information Accessibility: Developing Personas for Clicklaw

1. Clicklaw: Communicating for Impact Reaching our intended audience Brenda Rose October 25, 2012

2. One-stop access to BC’s public legal education and information resources from dozens of trusted organizations.

3. Clicklaw Contributors • Legal Services Society • People’s Law School • Justice Education Society • PovNet • BC Ministry of Justice • BC Coalition of People with Disabilities • Access Pro Bono • Native Courtworkers & Counselling Association of BC • NIDUS • Law Students’ Legal Advice Program • University of Victoria Law Centre • Tenants Resource and Advisory Centre • The Law Foundation of BC • BC Centre for Elder Advocacy Support • BC Law Institute • BC Civil Liberties Association • BC Freedom of Information and Privacy Association • Community Legal Assistance Society • MOSAIC • SFU Centre for Education, Law and Society • The Canadian Bar Association (BC) • West Coast Environmental Law • West Coast LEAF • Courthouse Libraries BC • Plus many others that the Clicklaw team maintains.

4. What is a Persona? “A persona is a user archetype you can use to help guide decisions about product features, navigation, interactions, and even visual design. By designing for the archetype – whose goals and behaviour patterns are well understood – you can satisfy the broader group of people represented by that archetype.” -- Kim Goodwin, Cooper (a design firm)

5. Why use personas for Clicklaw? • Clicklaw is an entry point for all British Columbians to PLEI resources and legal services • There are over 4 million people in British Columbia • The challenge: how to design Clicklaw to support such a diverse user base in finding what they’re looking for • Our approached: research the needs and characteristics of our potential users, and develop a set of Clicklaw personas to capture some key themes

6. We’ve created six Clicklaw personas: • the help seeker: Chelsea Campbell • the independent problem solver:Rani Singh • the info seeker:Timothy Lee • the helper: Sarah Duncan • the educator: Jorge Lamas • the learner: Matthew Gilmore

7. Who we’ve talked to (so far!) • Public librarians • College and university librarians • Library students and high school students • Legal advocates • Community and settlement workers • Lawyer Referral staff and Pro Bono Lawyers • Legal aid staff

8. Where we connect with people • Community events • Conferences and workshops • Hands-on training sessions • Webinar training sessions • Online training courses

9. To communicate effectively, we aim to… • Understand our audience • Capture people’s attention • Make legal information fun

11. Jeopardy at Law Day 2012

12. Crosswords

13. BCLA Conference

14. Charades

15. Questions?