TL; DR: Law is hard eoungh. Feel confident in your English-French legal translations - a reworked project.
Competitors
In 2014, Google Translate was the single online viable option for translation. However, it was not as precise as it could be, particularly for non-native speakers of either language.
The only other option available that did provide accuracy was a physical dictionary, however these could weigh a pretty penny!
User Interviews
Throughout design and development, I interviewed and tested out the website with law students.
In the beginning, I wanted to understand peoples’ current behaviours: when were students searching for words? How were they currently finding the translations? Was an online option something anyone else other than I would find useful?
I found that students found other ways to translate words they didn’t know. For example, they would source a translated version of a legal decision, scan the entire text until they found the right paragraph, and then search for the word. This underscored my decision that having an easy and online system was the best way forward and that there was indeed a need for this service.
Testing working-builds of the website also highlighted a number of features and functionality that were unique for this audience. For example, having access to a history of their searched words was a feature that was requested by users.
Solution - Then & Now
My original design was straightforward and plain. It accomplished exactly what it was meant to. However, now that I have gained some insight into best practices, I decided to implement theories of UX and redesign the various features that would be useful. These changes included:
Using recognizable iconography;
Implementing principles of visual hierarchy;
Making use of the colour palette that was used by my graphic designer; and
Introducing more features that were identified during the research period, but that in 2014 I did not have the required skills to create.
Juridict prototype can be accessed using AdobeXD by clicking the image above.