Building the Fair Term Checker App Part 5

A walkthrough of the Fair Term Checker App

We are excited to welcome you back to part 5 of our Fair Term Checker App Builder Series! In previous episodes, we've covered how to plan out your app using mind maps and other templates. We've also taken a look at the template document that gets assembled at the end of the app.

In this episode, Verity will talk about the user experience and copywriting behind the Fair Term Checker. We wanted to make the app was friendly and conversational, so we've structured it in a way that allows users to answer questions a few at a time. This helps to structure their thinking and prevent them from getting distracted by other details.

Of course, we want to make it clear that this app is not legal advice, so we have a disclaimer that users need to agree to before proceeding. We've also added a "See you later" section that users will encounter throughout the app when they select an option.

We've moved the email section to the front of the app after receiving feedback from users. We found that some people were missing it when it was at the end, so we made the change to improve user experience.

In the app, we also have an optionality split where we ask users whether they know whether or not the laws apply to them. This helps us determine whether users need to check their template or just their terms. We've made some changes to the app flow to ensure that everything runs smoothly, and we'll keep updating the map to make sure it's an accurate reflection of what's in the actual app.

We hope you've enjoyed the final episode of our Fair Term Checker App Builder series, and we can't wait to share more with you in the future!

Click here to watch the full YouTube playlist or watch part 5 below

Need help mapping your next automation or legal tech project? Check out our Automation Mapper tool

Want to take a sneaky peak at Checklist Legal's Fair Term Checker App? You can do that below

Transcript from video

Hello Verity from Checklist Legal here. Welcome to episode five. In our Fair term checker App Builder series. So, so far we've gone through planning out the map using a mind map, why you shouldn't build in the actual app itself. I think that's my personal opinion. So I showed you kind of how to build a mind map. And then in the third episode we had a look at other templates that you can build to try and form your thinking on different ways of getting your information out of your head mapped out before you build it in the app.

Then we had a look at the template document that that gets assembled at the other end of the app and kind of had a look at some of the details that you might want to put into your output document. And one of the reasons why I really like using Josef is because of the ability to lock down that those styles that I spent a lot of time and energy building out in Microsoft Word.

So now episode five, here we are. We're at the Fair Terms Checker. So I wanted to take you through some of the thinking behind the user experience, the copywriting that goes behind some of the bits and pieces that have gone into building out this app. So to start with, we're trying to be really friendly and conversational. One of the things that's interesting about the choice of platform is that you can have your app in either like a chat bot format or a form format.

Now I don't actually like the way that the chat bot format is formatted. I could perhaps through that in another video, if anyone wants it on showing you what this actually looks like when it's in the chat format, this is in the form format, but the way that I've kind of structured the form is so that you only kind of get served questions a few at a time because I really want to kind want to structure people's thinking and I don't want them to get too distracted by all the other bits and pieces.

I want them to move along as they go. So that's meant adding in a few extra things because I have to get the bot to stop. Think about what the next question is so that it doesn't skip ahead and show you all the other questions before events. The first one, if that makes sense. So obviously I want people to understand that this isn't legal advice.

Of course I'm a lawyer. I've got to have a disclaimer on my bots and apps. So the first thing that they have to do is agree. Now, I've used throughout this, and I think this is a good idea if you can have it is See you later kind of section. And I have this. Okay. Too bad. Like too bad.

So sad section that I reused any time that anyone kind of selects an option. And this is similar to like a choose your own adventure, right? Those books that used to read back in the nineties so that there's a section that you've got there that's like, okay, well see you later. So it's pretty easy if you have it once and then you can reappoint everyone to it whenever there's a see ya later section.

So if they do decide to agree and go ahead. One of the things that I've changed recently after user testing was having the email up the front. I did have it down the end, but I found that people were missing it and then they were like, Oh, this is this bots. It's not letting me kind of submit because they didn't enter in the email address, but that was my fault.

It's not their fault for not saying where to put their email address. That's my fault on user design. So I've experimented and put it back up the front to see. I have a feeling that people test out this app and put in a fake email address just because they want to check it out, but they don't want me to know who they are, which is totally fair enough.

But I will report back and let you know if that happens and if that's you. Hopefully you're having a little giggle right now. But so far I'm putting in the email address. Then there's some logic there that means they can't move forward until they hit okay, so from here, this is one of the optionality splits that I did have in my previous video that I talked about, where initially I was mapping out the process flow and you can see that I thought, first of all, the first thing would be that it would split about, yes, let's go.

And then I thought it would be Do you know whether or not these laws apply? However, the thing that I found as I was building it was that if I wanted to refer to the type of person that was using that the contract from the other party, I needed to ask that question before the split. Otherwise, if people didn't go down one particular route here, if they were like, No, I already know these laws apply, let's just go to the unfair terms part, then this wouldn't show up.

So hopefully that makes sense. So I had to move that around from my original mapping. Then I had to change that in the build. So I should technically be working to update this map so that it's an accurate reflection of what's in the actual app. Sorry, this map to the app. So from here, this is the split bit where what we're pointing out is, okay, do you know whether or not the laws apply and you just want to check your term or do you not know whether or not what these new laws are?

And you need to know whether or not they apply. And then maybe you check your template. So there's two options here. And the yes place, as you can see, is it's the same as what's in my original mine about. Yes, please. Or skip ahead. So to show you some of it, I'll say yes. Let's skip ahead. Hopefully most of us know that unfair contract terms already apply to consumers.

They also have already applied to small businesses. However, the difference that's coming in in Australia this year is that the the threshold for what classifies small business is lifting up considerably. So it's going to be less than 100 full time employees or it's going to be it's kind of one of a few different options. So here you can see when you think about who's going to be answering this question, the threshold is fewer than 100 or 100 or more.

However, when you think about your users, some of them would be working with a mix. Some of them might be working with companies that have 20 employees. They might have one or two that over 100 might be working with mostly over 100, you know, employees. And maybe this under and maybe they have no idea, like they might not know the business side of their suppliers.

So I think it's important to think of this from a few different perspectives. And when I originally built this out, I don't know if it's in, it's probably will be in here lips. So you can see I've built out only three limbs, but then as I was building it in the actual app and I saw it there, I was like, actually some people might have both.

So here I only had three limbs, but then when I came to build it, I was like, I need to have something that's a mix of both. And what's good about that is actually if they pick this option of a mix, it's the same as not sure actually, because you want to always on the side of a bit more compliance.

Obviously, this tool isn't, you know, legal advice, so they need to go and get stuff elsewhere. But that's kind of how I how I decided to do with that so that they get free. So to show you for completeness that one of the other steps is if you've got over more than 100 full time employees for the business that you're dealing with, then you look at turnover.

So again, you'll see in the map where this one goes to turnover. I only had the three there. Yes, more than ten. Less than 10 million or not sure. And so I've applied the same approach where there's probably going to be a mix. Suppliers could earn more than $10 million and some might earn less. And other people have no idea what their supplies.

And so we want to make sure that we're covering those from the user's perspective. Otherwise, if they were to come here and say, well, there's an option that I need that's not here, they kind of get stumped and they might go away. So then one of the overarching things to remember oh, and I should say I've got different little hints along here all the way, which I do like being able to have some of those extra hints so you don't have to have heaps of explanation if there's something that's kind of useful.

And I think most people who are used to using online tools now, if they get stuck, they do think to look for a hint and that can potentially help them out. I like to look for hints, so hopefully that's useful. Let me know as you test out the app whether or not it pops out for you. So then another threshold question, and again, this is where your thinking, your legal advisory hat kind of comes on and your analysis where where we're thinking about all the rules of if something is completely negotiated, is it a standard process or is there a little bit of negotiation?

And so this is when you are putting your legal hat on and then putting that into the app itself. So here for lots of negotiation, I'm reminding them that, hey, it's pretty unlikely that you'll even if you are negotiating every single term in your contract, I think I just don't think that there's many people that do that with smaller businesses and even with larger businesses.

I think that there's still some clauses where where you lots of companies say, well, this is our standard position and that's what applies. So I always think that we’re on the side of kind of explaining things again and not being like whatever. But the it's up to the user here. They can say, no worries, I don't need to check my terms and then off they go.

So then if, if they say, let's check the terms, then from here they're going, this is where there's the point where they go all the way back down across to search now we are on that, let's check the terms kind of stream because we've done that. Do the laws apply stream of option and now we're in the fair term checker option.

So here's where you enter the type of agreement name and this is a free text field, always dangerous to have free text as opposed to dropdowns. But we'll see how it goes. I think this is a good one because whether or not people want to put in code names or whatever it is that they are actually called the agreement, then the clause referenced.

So again, I've got some examples here whether or not it will be useful in that ultimate tool that gets put out the check, a tracker to put the entire clause so you can see the actual clause there, something that I'll maybe turn my mind to next. Then I'm taking them through the different elements. So originally when I did this, I actually had it on a five point scale.

I think I had orange and maybe blue or something in there as well, but it looked quite clunky and I also had it with a one, two, three, four, like a number, then a color and then the explanation. But it looks quite busy. I don't know if I've got an example of that I can show you, but I looked quite busy, so I stripped it right down.

So it was just the three potential answers. Perhaps it looks a bit oversimplified, but I think it helps people to go through it a little bit quicker and kind of understand that. Well, it's it kind of pushes that notion that this is just for general information only. So then we're looking at all the different factors. So readability, super important now for transparency, easy to read, easy to find.

It's going to be a key measure of transparency. So let's say that it's hard to find. Yes, sometimes we negotiate this particular term and then these are some of the terms that often, particularly on the lookout for that. I think we need to be particularly on the lookout for, because they're often one way rights that seem to crop up in a lot of agreements.

And then you can say that there's some particular particular clause types or term types which are excluded from unfair contract terms. So setting the upfront price, you can't really say, well, that's unfair. So then we say whether or not it's reasonably necessary, we can we could maybe make it a bit more reasonable. Why does the business need this term?

And you could say to protect from early termination, we need to cover upfront costs. I don't think that makes sense. Anyway, we'll see. Um, no, we've done nothing to balance the issues where you might say yes, we've made some minor attempts to balance and that's when you would capture. We've given a longer notice period and helped to transition, for example.

So here we go. We're at the pointy end of things. Tessa Testersen That's my test testing name... into the date of checking. So from a underlying app point of view, and you'll see I've made this comment here, it would be something that I would love to have in Joseph's wear, and maybe it is Joseph to let me know that the date could be order added in without the person using the application having to select it.

So I'm going to enter the date that I've done the checking. That's the then encouraging people to revisit. And you can see one of the fun calculations that you can do there is saying, Well, here's the date based on six months from that date. So not that it's maybe that hard to figure out yourself, but remembering that these laws coming in October 2023.

So there we go. Great work by me and then the reason for the pausing here is just I wanted people to actually take that active step to say, calculate it. It's already technically been calculated in the background. Oh my God, it’s potentially unfair. And in the previous episodes you've seen that document that comes with all the options in it.

And so what this flow chart is doing is flow chart. What this flow is, is the optionality is doing it based on the score from the answers it's showing when image or it's going down a different optionality pathway. So I don't know if I mapped that out here because I kind of already had it in my head. And at this point I think I kind of was building in the app, which I know I said don't do.

But you're right, Sometimes it gets done that last kind of ten, 20%. So you can see I've got 19 out of 35 and you know, there's some reminders here on different bits and pieces, Hey, we're going to send this to you would you like to booking a Contract Operations Strategy Session with Verity? Why wouldn't you? So I've added in kind of the option to book in that session.

And then the other thing that I think is really important, which is often quite tricky, is trying to make sure that people remember to send the thing like you have to send it. So I've got this hit submit now, like, you know, please, please, please hit send, because I think people get to the end and they come like, okay, done.

So getting them to actually submit it so that that way they get the full benefit of seeing the report at the end and, you know, I get the it's kind of like a lead magnet capture for me and I really want to kind of understand and get feedback on how this was to use and interact with. So if I don't have people's contact details, I can't do that.

That's about it. On the actual like going through the app, obviously it doesn't take that long each time you go through it, but interested in your thoughts. Feel free to have a play. Hopefully the link will be somewhere near this video and you can test it out for yourself. Thanks again and do reach out if you have a chat about your contract operations strategy before the unfair contract terms come in. Bye now.