CHANGE MANAGEMENT
RESEARCH
RESEARCH
Designing a platform to deliver streamlined legal services nationwide.
Overview
Introduction
I led the design and coordinated the rollout of a new customer portal at Hello Divorce.
Goals
Replace the confusing experience spread across BigCommerce & HubSpot
Streamline steps, instructions, and experts
Scale from 15 states to national
Prepare for an AI integration in 2025
Timeline
November 2024 - April 2025
Team
Design (Me) + Engineer + QA Engineer
Role
As the sole Designer, I built the experience from the ground up: mapping journeys, aligning stakeholders, designing UI and interaction flows, and leading the company-wide rollout.
Outcomes
DIY customer support requests dropped from 95% → 5%
34% increase in conversion with new “Free Step 1” experience
Migrated 2,000+ users across 15 states in under 8 weeks
Feedback & previous user experience
No single platform for forms, instructions, & affiliate links
100% of DIY customers couldn’t find instructions
Upcoming partnerships required a way to support national rollout
No way to highlight experts who are paying to be featured
Problem 1
How can we improve the user experience & reduce customer service touch-points?
Simplify for the user.
Our platform uses a few different services, but our users don’t want legal or technical complication - that’s why they picked us.
Problem 2
How can we use architecture and infrastructure to lessen the time it takes to rollout to a new state?
Don’t reinvent the wheel.
Working closely with customer teams ensured the structure of the portal was both easily extensible to new states and a potential future AI solution.
Problem 3
Our experts pay to be featured on our platform, how can we feature them and improve the expert to customer experience?
Feature resources before users know they need them.
Our customers struggled to find instructions and expert help. We fixed this by surfacing things customers needed on a per-step basis.
Impact
☎️ DIY customer support requests dropped from 95% → 5%
💰 34% increase in conversion with new “Free Step 1” experience
🚀 Migrated 2,000+ users across 15 states in under 8 weeks
🤓 40% increase in expert engagement
Reflection
Understanding the value of structure-first design & scaling complexity
As a small startup with tight deadlines, I realized we would have to focus on the structure of the solution before we could dive into aesthetics. I focused on:
Functionality
Usability/understanding
Bringing value to the customer (users going through divorce & experts in our directory)