Work
Overview
Michigan Justice For All Commission
Mintify partnered with the Michigan Supreme Court's Justice For All Commission to redesign the Advice of Rights notice and Answer Form used in Michigan debt collection cases.
The forms matter because the numbers around them are lopsided: 70% of these cases end in default judgment because the defendant never responds, and only 3% of defendants have legal representation, versus 90%+ of plaintiffs. Michigan's courts are not digitized, so the ask was user testing and redesign recommendations for documents that stay on paper — not a live product.
I directed a 10-person team split across analysis, research, and design:
- Research. Tabling at two public Ann Arbor locations and on campus, plus interviews and surveys, distilled through an affinity diagram into two personas and two journey maps
- What we found. Undefined legal jargon ("plaintiff," "defendant"), confusion over what to do next, intimidation by the documents themselves, an unclear right-to-a-jury section, and plain information overload
- Design. Paper sketches, then low-fidelity Figma wireframes, then mid-fidelity merging several designers' variants, then high-fidelity after testing
- Usability testing. Four participants, roughly 30 minutes each, recorded with an interviewer and a notetaker present
What changed:
- Advice of Rights — reorganized into three scannable card sections (Steps to Follow / Warning / Find Legal Help), which applies Hick's Law to cut decision complexity; deadline and consequence warnings isolated in a high-contrast red block; a QR code linking to legal-help resources for anyone holding a paper copy
- Answer Form — the "I don't owe" and "I owe" paths split horizontally and by color; three sections cut to two by folding the active-duty checkbox into an existing one; more room for write-in answers, gray borders to separate sections, "jury" bolded in the jury-demand paragraph, and a search-bar visual to aid scanning
The team delivered a high-fidelity prototype and final report in January 2026 for the Commission's use ahead of a planned randomized controlled trial on defendant participation.
Skills
Florida Community Innovation