MoJ - CRM7 Non-Standard Crime Claims (Alpha)
Hypothesis-driven design to untangle manual workarounds and inconsistent evidence handling in claims assessment.
The problem
Senior caseworkers at the Legal Aid Agency were assessing non-standard magistrates' court fee claims through a process held together with manual workarounds. Evidence submitted by legal aid providers was frequently irrelevant, mislabelled, or incoherent - making it nearly impossible for caseworkers to find what they needed to assess a claim. There were system timeouts, excessive screen switching, and a training burden that meant new starters took at least a week before they could work independently. The policy complexity meant design couldn't just solve the UX problems - it had to work within constraints that couldn't be changed.
What I did about the problem
Rather than trying to fix everything at once, I worked from a prioritised set of hypotheses - testing the riskiest assumptions first with both user groups to find out what was actually worth designing before committing to a direction. I synthesised research findings across legal aid providers and senior caseworkers, identifying the patterns that kept surfacing - incoherent evidence uploads, manual workarounds, poor error guidance - and translated those into specific, actionable UI and content design recommendations. I also embedded accessibility into the process rather than treating it as a final check, using Axe for Designers to audit prototypes against WCAG 2.1 AA throughout and resolving issues like insufficient touch targets before anything reached a developer.
What came out the other side
The hypothesis-driven approach gave the team a clear, evidenced rationale for moving into Beta - we knew what we'd validated, what we'd ruled out, and what still needed exploring. Accessibility issues were caught and resolved in the design phase, reducing risk and rework in development. And the research synthesis gave the team a shared understanding of where the real problems were - which is often half the battle.
What I learned
Hypothesis-driven design feels slower at the start but it's faster overall. Testing assumptions before building solutions means you're not designing your way into a dead end - and in a policy-constrained environment, that discipline matters.