Archives of Design Research

In business schools, contractual and commercial law are part of the curricula, and in design education students are meant to learn to handle intellectual property (Kim & Jang, 2023). However, as pointed out by Rossi and Palmirani (2020), “Users’ interpretation of legal document does not correspond to the rhetoric activity of legal professionals.” In other words, there is a difference in perception and activity between jurists trained in the legal sciences and the ‘users of the law’. The users of law need to follow or submit to the legal regulations without having professional legal skills. From the point of view of Atias (2015), “The teaching of law is simply the learning of a particular way which is the legal way of asking questions. Law is a way of questioning reality, which is complex and delicate, simply because the lawyers know that there are always several points of view.” It’s important, therefore, that users who aren’t initiated into law and legal sciences, develop such awareness (Rouvière, 2021). Nevertheless, handling various points of views and the related methods aren’t the main objective pursued in business & technology schools. Instead, the objective is to educate students who will be tasked with assuming responsibilities, ensuring they possess an understanding of the legal ramifications and the economic as well as strategic decisions they will need to navigate within the realm of business (Do Carmo Silva et al., 2018). However, explorations of teaching law to non-lawyers showed the limit of the traditional pedagogical education method (Morris, 2007).

In fact, the traditional way of teaching law in France is based on introducing legal texts under the form of Codes (Pimont, 2019). Among the popular law teaching methods are the traditional way, involving many reading and lecturing, and case analysis; the context-sensitive method, emphasizing the operating environment; the mixed method, which relies on short lecturing, and more focus on group discussions (Endeshaw, 2002). However, researchers suggested that content-intensive law teaching is not relevant anymore as it does not sufficiently relay the practical problems, solutions, and consequences business students will face in their careers (Batty, 2013). The role of law instructors was also questioned in business schools, and researchers recommended a higher level of context and practicality orientation in the teaching methods (Endeshaw, 2002). Relying on visual and interactive teaching means promotes non-lawyer students’ understanding and engagement of legal practices (Spanjaard et al., 2022).

For non-law students, learning the discipline of law has been reported by researchers to be perceived as highly challenging and unexciting (Allen, 2007; Endeshaw, 2002; Khan, 2021; Razak & Azmi, 2018).

Delivering the law courses to non-law students in a different way than to law students has been discussed and established since the beginning of the 21st century (Endeshaw, 2002; Richardson et al., 2009).

A more recent attempt to respond to the challenge of improving the delivery of law courses to non-law students is e-learning which includes short lecturing, library-based research, group discussions and case analysis (Razak & Azmi, 2018). Additionally, the Issues-Rules-Application-Conclusion (IRAC) and Issue-Law-Application-Conclusion (ILAC) teaching methodologies were evoked as appropriate and/or innovative course content delivery for business students (Khan, 2021; Richardson et al., 2009). The ILAC technique, delivered online and involving a practicing lawyer to share real experience, was reported to generate interest and attention, be enjoyable, reduce fear of learning law, and bring problem-solving skills (Khan, 2021). Methods other than the classic “black-letter” one have been sensed as lowering learning barriers, enhancing engagement and class participation, as well as instigating dynamic interactivity (Endeshaw, 2002; Razak & Azmi, 2018).

Course content delivery methods and the role of the lecturer aren’t the only issues in teaching law to non-law students. Each discipline has its convention or culture, implying the development of a specific attitude, way of thinking, behaving, and communicating (Allen, 2007; Corrales Compagnucci et al., 2021). Students who follow a specific discipline, in the perspective to learn how to practice it as a profession in the future, may need to overcome various other impediments related to their personality type and the capacity to engage with other disciplines’ conventions (Allen, 2007). The capacity of non-law students to apply problem-solving techniques for law-students is equally different (Richardson et al., 2009).

Ji (2019) highlighted that the legal design must be co-created in cross disciplinary way. Corrales Compagnucci et al. (2021) argued that interdisciplinary communication and cooperation, more specifically, involving lawyers and designers, is arduous as each profession’s expert relies on their specific language, worldview, values, to express their ideas. In social psychology and neuroscience, for instance, interpretations of the law culture point to the need of advanced precision, attention to detail, systematic sequential reasoning, and detachment, while design culture needs empathy, intuition and non-linear thinking (Corrales Compagnucci et al., 2021). Such discrepant practices are held responsible for collaboration difficulties, change management issues, and various cross-functional misunderstandings (Bloor & Dawson, 1994; Corrales Compagnucci et al., 2021; Pieterse et al., 2012).

Critical legal aspects that need to be reflected in business education belong to both the macro and micro levels in a way that addressing exclusively the tactics with legal topics is not enough (Petty, 2000). Manna et al. (2022) revealed the effectiveness of using design thinking as a teaching method in business curricula to enhance the needed critical thinking skills of students for combining visionary with micro-level developments. However, business and legal professional cultures are distinct and combining them requires special attention from educators to support students’ understanding and learning. In business education standards, visualization practices can additionally support targeted content engagement leading to enhanced actual learning (Bacon & Stewart, 2022). It is to be noted that information about how visualization could support law courses in business and technology schools was not identified by the time of writing the article.

At the end of the 90s, the French Constitutional Council consecrated the requirement of accessibility and intelligibility of the law (Benezech, 2020). In line with these principles, legal articles should be composed in a manner that is readily comprehensible to individuals tasked with reading, adhering to, or implementing legal regulations. Nonetheless, grasping the intricacies of the law can be challenging due to the technical and highly specialized use of language. Niinikoski and Toivonen (2021) highlighted the increasing need for more understandable and easier legal work products in education, with such concepts as “human-centric design”, “co-creation” and “empathy skills”.

As law requires efforts to “translate” it comprehensively to users, clear and understandable communication has been pointed as central. This led to the development of legal design and its introduction into law schools (Corrales Compagnucci et al., 2021; Hagan, 2020; Ji, 2019). Design thinking pedagogy has been found to support the development of new essential skills of law students, thus preparing them to embrace the profession of lawyers in a successful way in the future (Hews et al., 2023).

Legal design appears to be a possible solution to the difficulties of understanding law and legal information. As previously discussed, the requirements and needs for understanding legal information differ for non-lawyers. The street vendor project illustrates even further the power of visual communication for understanding law application and insuring the feeling of accessibility. Hagan (2020) recommended legal design for cross-disciplinary innovation. Visual elements are not meant to completely replace text in legal documents, rather, illustrations, such as diagrams, timelines, icons, and comics, complement text (Rossi & Palmirani, 2020).

A playful teaching method in legal design called ludopedagogy provides more interaction (Brown et al., 2020). Comicboarding is one of the ludopedagogy tools facilitating participation (Hiniker et al., 2017; Moraveji et al., 2007). Therefore, such design tools as storyboards are potential facilitators of the understanding of legal texts which are perceived difficult to learn and understand by non-lawyer students.

The role of any tangible design object is to visually ensure the understanding of the function (Norman, 2013). Within the realm of legal design, visualization serves as a means to efficiently convey legal information to end users, enabling them to gain a clear and comprehensible understanding of the subject matter (Niinikoski & Toivonen, 2021). Visualization delivered in a simple way diminishes mental stress, increases acceptability, and encourages ease of use (Zhang & Li, 2004).

As Hassenzahl and Tractinsky (2006) describe, user experience (UX) focuses on such hedonic aspects of use as fun and pleasure, which represent positive emotions. It’s worth noting that the visual aspect holds significant importance in supporting to convey emotions (Kahn, 2017). More specifically, Hagan and Özenç (2020) advised storytelling and a user-friendly interface as appropriate means for teaching law. Additionally, storytelling has been found to represent a major tool for engaging the students’ participation (Robson & Mills, 2022). Effectively, storytelling procures more interaction and stimulates the students’ engagement (Spanjaard et al., 2022). Storytelling has been already exemplified in marketing education and accounting courses (Spanjaard et al., 2022).

The transmission of information to the brain is mainly visual (George Eid, 2022). Storyboard as the visual means of transmitting information while teaching was found to associate to such benefits as facilitating attention and enhancing understanding (Asyrifah et al., 2021; Huang, 2019; Wan Husain et al., 2020). The use of storyboard immersion can provide a user-friendly experience, reducing apprehension about the law. This is achieved through the enjoyable and interactive elements that stimulate student engagement (Manna et al., 2022). UX methodologies such as mapping the user's journey or employing storytelling techniques have the capacity to foster greater empathy and interactivity (Micheaux & Bosio, 2019). Using interactive support in the education domain motivates knowledge acquisition, learning and interaction, engagement and enjoyment (Florenthal, 2019; Moraveji et al., 2007). Thus, a storytelling method with visualized storyboard can help the students to understand an unfamiliar concept that they aren’t used to, like a legal text, and increase motivation.

The students were offered a real law-case storyboard, specifically designed by one of the researchers, using a storytelling approach to foster students’ understanding and engagement (Krom & Williams, 2011; Rohm et al., 2018; Spanjaard et al., 2022). The storyboard reflected the need to bring focus to legal details and systematic sequential reasoning while combining these with empathy and intuition. These elements correspond to the law and the design professional cultures respectively, as explained by Corrales Compagnucci et al. (2021). The storyboard brought the different professional cultural elements together.

The storyboard was created with multiple back-and-forth collaborations (Figure 2). It started with translation of a court-case to a scenario, then to a rough sketch. The selected course topic was “Liability for defective products”, as a component of “product safety”, one of the main categories of law teaching at marketing curricula (Petty, 2000). With several iterative sessions of sketching and adjusting, we finalized the storyboard by incorporating questions on content.

Figure 2 Storyboard creation process

The scenario was developed based on a real-case decision of the Court of Cassation, based on article 1245 of the French Civil Code. The rough sketch permitted the law teacher to grasp the difficulty for non-lawyers to conceptualize the legal text. Furthermore, it played a crucial role in conveying and demonstrating the degree of understanding shared between the law teacher and the designer. (Figure 3).

Figure 3 Examples of rough sketches

This process transformed a court case which is fuzzy and abstract for non-lawyers into a story with illustrations and diagrams. This final storyboard was presented with customized PowerPoint animation in a way to allow the student to grasp the general procedural aspects. Examples of the storyboard can be found in Figure 4.

Figure 4 Examples of the storyboard

During the visualization, we played with “cliché” images to attract attention while respecting the fact. The red bikini contrasts with the yellow combi, both drawn in representation using symbolic power (Bourdieu, 1991).

We selected a second-year students’ promotion where the students have already had initial law classes, and who already follow business and technology school education. The class was composed of 40 students. The topic was delivered to 2 groups of students during a 1h30 session. Each group received a version with a different level of visual incorporation. The students were aged 19-20 (22 students for group 1, 18 students for group 2).

Data were collected through observation and instant students’ perception feedback through sentence-completion type projective technique. Sentence completion involves blending a projective technique with a questionnaire. In this approach, participants are given sentence beginnings and are prompted to finish them in a manner that holds personal significance to them (Kujala et al., 2014). Sentence completion has such advantages as useful qualitative user feedback, richness of the information collected, and understanding of a user’s thoughts and feelings, experiences and motives (Doherty & Nelson, 2010; Hoyer et al., 2007; Kujala et al., 2014; Pearce & Lee, 2009). Additionally, sentence completion can support enjoyment and engagement, as well as decrease the difficulty and subjectivity of the interpretation of complex data (Heyward, 2020). For the sentence-completion projective technique, the students received hard copies and anonymously filled them in.

The two sessions were taught by the law professor and observed by one of the researchers, the designer, for their reactions and interactions. We preferred to note the behavior discretely rather than filming the students, which could change their behavior. The results are displayed in the word cloud diagrams in the next section.