"Be the digital design partner to our in house development team"

Equilaw is a team of expert solicitors that specialise in helping people with the legal processes attached to releasing equity from their home. They work with both the home owner and their financial advisors to navigate the process, ensuring that all the right documents are completed, details are checked and the experience is as stress-free as possible.  They also play a vital role in safeguarding more vulnerable clients from issues related to capacity and duress.

Having worked with Equilaw’s MD, Max Hayden before, we were delighted when he dropped Jilly an email to discuss some portal design requirements.

Equilaw has two portals:

• One for financial advisors, with over 1,500 active users, which was live but could do with some improvement, and
• Another for homeowners, which was a prototype developed by Equilaw’s in-house Tech Director, Will Matthews, and his team, but hadn’t really had any User Experience (UX) or User Interface (UI) expertise applied and so wasn’t live

The customer portal was the priority, so we started there.

Team Bravand’s UX Design legend, Alexa and business best bud Jilly first got to grips with how the prototype was built to date, the user requirements, the business requirements and therefore the features needed. Alexa went on to interview key stakeholders within the Equilaw team, testing the current prototype and building a better view of the humans we were designing for.

Next step - wireframes baby!

Alexa opened up the Figma magic and mapped out a whole new interface design that made it clear to the homeowner where their process was at, actions required from them and others in the process, and any deadlines they need to be aware of.

Then, teaming up with Chief Crayon Emma, the new design was brought to branded life! On brand, on brief and on time. We presented the new design to chief dev Will, along with functionality notes and specs and system design assets all packaged up - and off it went for their in-house team to code up.

“Banging is the new feedback I am personally loving”
Emma Wood - Chief Crayon, after a design review session

Customer portal done, next - let’s make our IFAs happy!

With an existing portal being used, we had a bit more real data to work with, talking to the Equilaw team to find out what the top queries were:

• What IFAs had already asked for in terms of portal improvements
• What problems we could solve for our client team at the same time

Taking the design system from the customer portal, Alexa and Emma got to work designing a new sleek interface that showcased each IFA the status of all of their client cases in one view, plus detailed views of each case and customer and flagging anything that might be holding the process up.

Once again, off we went to show the designs to Chief Tech Will and a couple of detailed briefings later, the designs were handed over for in house implementation.

"Bravand are a fantastic company to work with. They work really hard to understand exactly what we’re looking for, but they also challenge our thinking.

You only realise how little you know about UX design when you work with these guys. The level of detail they go into in terms of reviewing everything is incredible. Even down to the wording we use in our questionnaire - no stone was left unturned.

The end result has been the launch of a market leading customer portal experience, not only giving us a competitive advantage, but more importantly it has given our customers a world class online user experience."
Max Hayden, MD at Equilaw

To chat more about this project, or a project of your own, give our Ross a shout - 07799 885 950 / ross@bravand.com.‍