A satisfying user experience of dense and highly technical contracts

This major industry player came to us to entirely redesigned their 45 pages General Terms and Conditions, operating in a highly regulated environment: nuclear plants. We took on the challenge, as we firmly believe Legal Design is not just for simple and short legal documents.

Our goal was to evolve the content from highly technical language focused on the energy sector into a plain language document, without changing the legal scope… all this in a very short deadline !

User-centricity full on: we held several user workshops with all the various stakeholders, and even some lawyers willing to learn our methodology – we’re always happy to share and empower our clients!

The analysis of the user research prompted us to keep some specific terms, while creating explanation bubbles next to the text to give examples and plain definitions, to help the reader understand them right away. We could not change the structure of the document because of some specific constraints at our client’s end, but we leveraged graphic illustration of key clauses and key processes: how long do they have to send a technical requirement, make a claim or how are disputes solved between parties. This enables readers to immediately understand what is at stake and gives them tools for action.

An entirely redesigned document, easy to navigate and intuitive. We made sure the T&Cs would be clickable throughout to help readers understand the logical connections between the various clauses.

We also used a breadcrumb system by applying the client’s graphic charter to navigate the various sections. Although this remained a long legal document, the readability was largely improved, with the help of graphic illustrations and timelines. A big step ahead of designing a 4 pages NDA !