Award Winning Analytics That Rescued a Legal Tech Startup

Team: Engineers, Legal SMEs, PM Focus: Data Vis, Design Systems

Redefining What Knowable Has to Offer

An analytics system gave Knowable a huge pitch over other contract management services: Choose Knowable and we’ll give you insights into how your company tends to negotiate its contracts. Before this system existed Knowable still did store and analyze contracts, but it only let users filter on the results of that analysis, which isn’t as useful. Knowable struggled to stand out and a mass layoff took place on my first day. So with no prior experience in the legal tech industry I delivered an analytics system (supported by a from-scratch design system) that went live just three months after that layoff. It won both of Legalweek’s product innovation awards and Knowable reported profit for the first time the year it launched.

Old Design

New Design

A One Week Design Sprint

Design sprints are a great solution for a project on a tight timeline with a lot of unknowns. I set up and executed a sprint that took place physically in the Knowable office during my second week. I contacted key stakeholders and gave them roles for the sprint. I took on the role of Designer.

Monday – Research

I led group research interviews with every SME I could schedule.

Tuesday – Ideation

Each sprint member sketched ideas they had for the analytics system.

Wednesday – Review

I taped each idea to a whiteboard and handed out a budget of colored dots for participants to stick to their favorites. Warm colors for people with legal backgrounds; cool for techies. After discussion, a decision was reached.

Thursday – Prototype

My busiest day: I turned notes from Wednesday into a clickable prototype purpose built for a prototype evaluation study that I also set up and wrote questions for.

Friday – Testing

I called the SMEs from Monday back in as users for the prototype evaluation. Each attempted to drill down to a specific contract by clicking directly on the bar of the bar chart it belonged in.

A mock-up from Thursday prototype showing the main analytics dashboard.

A mock-up from the Thursday prototype showing what happens when the user clicks on data in a chart – they’re taken to a list of every relevant contract.

Good Analytics Tools Need Good Design Systems

Knowable was a new enough business when I joined that it didn’t have things like colors nailed down yet. To solve this I took inspiration from their logo colors and expanded into a full palette.

I built out Knowable’s component library at the same time to see how the colors I was deciding on would actually show up. I iterated on the colors and components to ensure designs would have WCAG 2.1 compliant visibility and contrast under the rules of my new system while continuously checking in with engineering, design, and senior leadership to ensure the direction I was taking us met their needs.

Colors and components I created for Knowable’s new design system.

Finding Flexible Chart Designs

I worked with engineering to find a chart library that worked for us and styled those charts to our look and feel. I determined a set of data colors to use that fit the colors I had chosen for the wider design system, then mocked up a sample of what various analytics charts would look like in the Knowable style. I aimed for an informative yet minimalist approach, leaving room for long legal fields without adding unnecessary UI that could clutter the screen further.

The chart designs I created to serve as the backbone for Knowable’s analytics platform.

Final Design for MVP

A v1 mock-up of the analytics system I helped design. Each tab contains a dashboard of charts relevant to that tab.

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