Alphabet Workers Union
Alphabet’s Workers have a strong history of standing up to Alphabet’s more controversial decisions. With the move to CWA, AWU felt it was important to have a brand and a website that reflected this strength. My team and I were here to help them find their voice and create a website that resonated.
Project Goals and Timeline
Duration:
April-July 2023
Responsibility:
User Researcher + UX Designer
I worked as the User Experience Designer on this project, as well as the sole UX Researcher. I worked with Audrey Desler (Project Lead and Creative Director) and Madi Graham (Visual and Web Designer), along with the AWU team.
My work included:
Content/UX Audit of existing website
User Interviews (for branding and UX purposes)
Wireframing and Prototyping
Information Architecture
User Testing
Reviewing the current website
I started out with a UX audit of the current website, reviewing where it was doing well, and where it was falling short. I also interviewed union members, as well as prospective union members to understand their experience and how they use it.
Some of the trends in user thoughts are below:
Difficulty finding basic information
“The website should answer these questions: what is a union? how much does it cost? and, most importantly, what has AWU accomplished?”Consolidation for easier access
“Consolidate things that go together. Posting on the forum could all be under one tab. Messaging applications all under one tab. Resources all together…”Sharing wins that can be used as talking points
“I want to know concrete details like plans, recent wins, values, details.”
After speaking with current, prospective and long-time union members, it became clear that the website needed to make it easier for people to join, and also for people that have joined to obtain the information they needed to talk to others about the union, as the majority learned of it from referrals.
Identifying Business Goals
I interviewed a total of 16 people (experienced and new union members, all levels of activity, including board members). In this process I created the test script and made sure that I understood how union members found out about the union, what they reviewed to become a member, and also how they use it on an ongoing basis.
I also asked users to complete tasks and give us overall impressions of the current website in order to benchmark usability in our revised website. Tasks included:
Locating AWU’s wins
Finding their local chapter
Finding the next union event
All three tasks were difficult for users to complete. At that point in time, there was no list of local chapters, there was not enough detail about union events to know what they were about, and while AWU’s wins were accessible they were not in the most intuitive place.
Making the website more intuitive through sitemapping
Madi and I created a sitemap to identify how best to organize the data. Using guidance from our user research, we aimed to highlight wins, consolidate where possible, and make the sections more intuitive.
Creating an Inclusive Website
Something that I observed in my user interviews was the confusion at times between the full-time employees and the contractors (known as TVCs). The full-time employees felt included, but the website was not as clear to TVCs, and they make up a large part of eligible union members. I made a conscious effort to bring the TVCs into many of our pages so they felt comfortable, and this was reflected in user testing as well. One of the TVCs said “it’s good to see people like us on the website.”
Other examples of this effort are here as well, which included
Making sure TVC efforts were covered in Press Releases
Making sure that FAQs assured the TVCs that they were eligible as well.
Showcasing Union Strength
During the user interviews, some of the initial apprehensions that came up about joining the union were around how powerful the union actually was, and also what did their win record look like. Showing the union’s press coverage like in this example here, creating a strong wins page, and also highlighting the paid organizers employed by the union and their years of experience helped to showcase this strength.
Make joining and onboarding easier.
When we interviewed new members, it was often difficult for them to know how to get started within the union and what their local connections were. Creating a New Member Resources page as well as a Chapter Locator page helps new union members to know what to expect.
User Testing Outcomes
I created a test script for our users and had them navigate through the website and prioritized fixes given the time constraints that we had. One of the high priority items, updating the form, was not completed in MVP, but will be completed in the future.
When completing these tests, 90% of participants were able to locate wins, 100% could locate where to join, and 80% could find their chapter, a huge increase from the roughly 50% task completion rate in the prior user interviews.
Users also appreciated that both full-time workers and contractors were featured, that contact information was prominent, and that there was a very easy way to see union wins.
Reflection
I really enjoyed working with the Alphabet Workers Union, their passion and excitement for their work was contagious. I appreciated that they were willing to follow the full UX process and they were open and receptive to the feedback of their users. Many of our identified issues were fixed, and those that were not are supposed to be updated at a later date. You can view the launched website here.