Simplifying the estate planning process.
2023 - 2024
My co-founder Justin and I started Keepsake as full-time business students at USC, exploring startups with support from campus incubators (TroyLabs & Lloyd Grief Summer Incubator) and pitch competitions (New Venture Seed Competition).
Initially, Keepsake was designed as a digital vault for families to keep track of everything from IDs to family recipes to finances and so on (reference 'Legacy'). At this point, we had no intention of catering to businesses, or estate attorneys. However, along our journey of customer discovery, it became apparent that consumers weren't experiencing what we mistakenly assumed was a deep-rooted issue. For families, Keepsake was a 'nice-to-have' — not a 'need-to-have'. So, we made our first pivot as a bootstrapped startup without funding, and shifted our focus to explore B2B opportunities (independent living facilities, wealth managers, professional organizers).
We eventually discovered alignment with estate attorneys, and attempted to sell Keepsake in its current form (digital vault for families). But it wasn't enough — estate attorneys loved the idea of offering Keepsake to clients but not enough to pay. We recognized we weren't offering estate attorneys enough direct value so, with the feedback and guidance of estate attorneys, we built an attorney-facing platform that integrated with the digital vault.
Legal software is not designed for the niche sector of estate planning, forcing estate attorneys to rely on clunky disconnected tools, paralegals, and manual tasks.
When it’s time to give clients their finalized documents, current estate plans fall short in accounting for important life details (e.g. passwords, insurance, life stories) and are difficult to access in their physical form.
Improve how estate attorneys gather and store client information, and manage actionable estate data before drafting plans.
Keepsake supplements dense estate plan documents with a user-friendly life portal, where clients can safely store important life details.
To better understand the challenges estate attorneys face in creating an estate plan.
We conducted interviews with approximately 40 estate attorneys across the U.S. To gather valuable, objective insights into the estate planning process and its associated challenges, we scheduled appointments through cold calls. For some of these appointments, given the difficulty of reaching these professionals, we posed as potential clients. For others, we transparently represented Keepsake and demoed our Figma prototype to discuss specific pain points.
The process of creating an estate plan varies from estate attorney to estate attorney. But here's the general 4 - 6 week process:
Estate attorney challenges revolved around one central theme: manual processes.
Competitors exist in direct and indirect competitive markets, ranging from large scale legal management tools to smaller startups. Competition is dense in the general legal management space, but opportunistic in the niche sector of estate planning.
To address the pain points identified in the 'Research' stage and design a user-friendly interface that enhances the estate planning workflow.
With the help of FigJam mindmaps and free-flowing conversation, we narrowed our ideas down to 3 loose concepts:
Intake form builder with custom components
Dashboard that automatically reformats and populates client intake form data for easy understanding
Integration between the estate attorney platform and the existing family portal, allowing clients to keep track of important life details and estate attorneys to upload relevant materials (e.g. copy of estate plan documents)
We recruited 5 estate attorneys based on their experience with estate planning software and willingness to provide detailed feedback. Given the difficulty in securing volunteer time with estate attorneys, we focused on those with whom we had already established a relationship.
Participants were asked to perform a series of tasks designed to test specific features:
1) Creating a custom intake form
2) Creating a matter
3) Sending an intake form
4) Sharing a document
We collected data through screen recordings, detailed observational notes, and follow-up interviews.
Participants struggled to track their progress throughout the estate planning process.
Participants frequently highlighted Keepsake's clean and intuitive interface, document sharing feature, and client information management dashboard.
To address the participants' concerns, we implemented one key change: manual pipeline for estate attorneys to define their step-by-step estate planning process.
Operating within a fast-paced startup has altered the typical design process. The estate attorney platform needed to be fully designed and handed off to the devs in under one month, leaving little time for critical feedback and iteration.
Down the road, we plan to add a guided walkthrough for newly onboarded estate attorneys to help them better understand how to use Keepsake.
https://www.figma.com/design/5NN4LxZYND98lcflVbpo0X/Keepsake?node-id=0-1&t=1yZPzXLtRMkIhPI5-1
Bringing the low-fidelity wireframes to life, we prioritized estate attorney needs to create a seamless process from intake to final deliverable.
This feature offers a custom intake form builder designed to help estate attorneys tailor forms to their firm’s specific needs. The builder organizes forms into sections, each with its own set of questions. To simplify the creation process, we've designed custom question components that enable attorneys to quickly build intake forms from scratch. The primary design focus was to empower estate attorneys to rapidly create their own intake forms with extensive customization.
This feature offers a dashboard designed to help estate attorneys process and visualize client details from the intake form. To eliminate the repetitive task of transferring and re-entering client information, the dashboard leverages the custom question components to automatically collect and organize the intake form information into distinct categories. This direct integration helps estate attorneys prepare design meeting and drafting stage materials, and better communicate estate plan details to clients. The primary design focus was to improve how estate attorneys extract value from client data and eliminate the repetitive tasks.
This feature links estate attorney portals with client portals, allowing estate attorneys to upload documents directly to their clients, and providing clients with seamless access to digital copies of their estate plans. The primary design focus was to enhance client accessibility to their estate plans.
Check out the full website at hellokeepsake.com.
Over the course of the past year working on Keepsake as an estate attorney solution, we worked with 14 technical contributors, designed over 150 Figma frames, created and managed over 800 Linear issues, and implemented over 400 lines of code.
The team is everything. Collaborating with a diverse group of contributors highlighted the importance of reliability. Regular 1-on-1 check-ins, team updates, retrospectives, and open channels of communication were crucial for staying on track and aligning everyone's goals.
Flexibility proved critical to our approach, as we let customer discovery and user feedback guide our pivot from families to estate attorneys. Adapting to new information and circumstances allowed Keepsake to change direction and ultimately find its target users. Embracing the principles of user-centric design and continuous improvement, we iterated on our designs and refined Keepsake to better meet the needs of estate attorneys.
I had the pleasure of working with Izzy at Keepsake, where she consistently delivered high-quality designs using Figma and worked efficiently with developers to bring stories to life. Despite being younger than many of her peers in the industry, I was often impressed by her professionalism and ability to translate ideas into intuitive, user-friendly designs. On top of this, her positive attitude and collaborative spirit made her a joy to work with. I highly recommend Izzy for any UI/UX design role and would be happy to work with her again in the future.
Isabella was a pleasure to work with during my time on the Keepsake team. She is an excellent communicator and leader, and it was easy to work through the problems facing our users together. Her designs always showed a high level of polish and attention to detail, and they were both aesthetically pleasing and user-friendly. She would be a great asset to any team.
As a partner, I've had the privilege of working alongside Izzy to lead build our team and product from the ground up. She thrives in a fast-paced environment, and works best when juggling multiple responsibilities. Izzy is a quick and curious learner who dives deep into complex issues and drives constant innovation. What sets her apart is her strong attention to detail and dedication to her team. She's always willing to put in the extra hours to get the job done. She's a natural leader and an exceptional communicator, always organized and prepared for whatever challenges come our way. She's an indispensable part of the team.
