Lexis® for Microsoft Office®

Lexis® for Microsoft Office® — Check Citation Format

Project Description

Check Cite Format checks the format of the user's citations against common standards, such as the Blue Book, state manuals, etc. I was the UX Designer on the project to redefine and redesign all of its citation-related tools from the ground up, changing the logic as well as the UI. Previously, one had to check all of one's citations in one batch, one at a time, before using any other citation-related tool. Based upon customer feedback, we changed the program so that the user could see the status of each citation (good as is, needing attention, missing information) and decide on an individual basis whether to change the citation or not. Since it was no longer necessary to check all of them at once, we had to incorporate a way to distinguish between those the user had and had not looked at yet, which added some complexity to all of the tools.

My Work

My job was to:

redesign the various dialogs and report pages to be more usable, based on testing
keep the user informed of the status of each citation and the ramifications of their choices regarding each citation

I worked closely with the cross-functional project team and our citation experts to come up with a usable scheme. I designed an interactive prototype using Axure Pro to illustrate all of the use cases for changing one's citations singly, or in a batch. I used so many dynamic panels that my prototype for the three document tools was larger than the entire program itself!

We also included a scorecard of the various statuses of the citations. We made sure to adhere to accessibility standards by requiring that both shape and color change to indicate different statuses, namely, the status of the citation plus whether the user has acted upon it yet.

Project Details

Client LexisNexis
Project Type Desktop Application
Date 2012-2014 (various releases)
Role UX Design
URL Video of Check Cite Format
Description of slides
1. Word document with user selecting the Check Citation Format icon in the Lexis ribbon
2. Check Citations Report opening up in the right pane.
3. Check Citations Scorecard shows the status of the various citations. Previously, the user had to correct all before using any other tools. This version allows the user to see them all at a glance and to decide which ones to correct.
4. Cite Citation Format dialog opens if the user clicks on an item in the report. The dialog shows the current version of the citation, versus the suggested version, and gives the user the option to select his own version, the correct version, or to declare the passage not to be a citation.
5. Correct All Dialog.This dialog shows the user which citations will be corrected automatically, so that the user can decide which ones are corrected automatically, and possibly save some for manual correcting.