SRLN 2024

It is crucial for courts to listen to the communities they serve to ensure that their practices and procedures meet and respond to the needs, values, and experiences of people directly impacted by the legal system.  Gathering feedback and testing materials and processes with court users can feel overwhelming, frightening, and time-consuming. But user feedback and testing are critical to ensuring that our courts are fair and equitable and reflect the needs and experiences of the people who use them. Further, user testing with community members can help dispel fear they have of the courts, helps empower them, and promotes deeper trust in the court system. 

Incorporating court user experience and perspectives in an engaging manner will help courts and legal services organizations improve their communications, forms, and processes to increase access, particularly for SRLs and historically marginalized groups, and to implement changes based on it. User feedback and testing can be done simply and efficiently. This session will cover user feedback and testing basics, including how to build user feedback and testing into court and organization practices and when and how to use particular feedback methods, such as surveys and focus groups.

Presenters will also share strategies for gathering user feedback and performing user testing, including guidance on how to identify court users for testing or feedback, survey tools and questions, and focus group facilitation tips. Participants will discuss short and long-term ways they will incorporate what they learned during the session. This session will include panelists from Illinois, Michigan, and the National Center for State Courts that have effectively engaged in user feedback and testing to improve court remote hearing processes, court forms, and self-help materials.