2016. Responsive website.
United Nations
The appointment of a new Secretary-General at the end of 2016 brought about a stronger commitment to a United Nations workforce that represents all genders equally.
My role: I led the user-centred design process for the United Nations website:
United for Gender Parity
Note: Confidential information has been omitted or obscured. This case study represents my views and not the views of the United Nations.
An early prototype of the site which was initially called ‘50:50 Gender Equality’
THE CHALLENGE
Design a website for UN Staff to understand the organization's forthcoming initiative to achieve 50/50 gender equality and parity for all United Nations staff members at all levels globally.
RESEARCH
We first spent time analysing the current gender data throughout the organisation in order to understand the disparity between male in females in different geographical locations, job networks, and job levels/salaries. We also made sure everyone in the team understood the new gender initiative and policies that were about to be launched.
We wanted to speak to as many staff members as we could, so we decided to begin our user research process by conducting four focus group sessions of approximately 15 participants per group. We held two sessions with groups of both men and women, one all-women group, and one all-men group. We suspected that the all-women/all-men groups might allow for more candid responses when discussing sensitive issues such as gender inequality at the workplace. We then pulled a handful of the participants and conducted further user interviews.
We synthesised all the responses using an affinity diagram and pulled key themes and issues. We learned that one of the main concerns amongst staff members was around the question "what's in it for me?". Staff wanted to know exactly how the new policies would affect their careers as individuals. They didn't want to just read the new policy, but also be guided by resources and tools that could help them. Staff were also interested in up-to-date gender data, as many were not aware of the current situation, which favoured men especially in positions at the higher levels.
“As a staff member, I want to hear stories of other staff members. I don’t just want to hear what the administration is telling us.”
DEFINITION
The problems we set out to solve were around how we might raise awareness of the new gender equality initiative to over 40,000 UN staff members around the world whilst creating an online space for them to stay engaged and involved in the initiative. And we wanted to make sure their concerns were being heard.
We worked on information architecture, taking some of the main themes from our affinity diagram, and using those as possible headings for our main navigation.
IDEATION AND DESIGN
We brainstormed ideas on post-its and whiteboards and then sketched our ideas for screens on paper and then moved to mid-fidelity prototypes using Adobe XD. We knew we wanted to show 1) up-to-date data that showed how the UN is progressing to meet its gender goals, 2) stories from real staff members talking about their experiences related to the new gender initiative, and 3) tools and resources such as training and mentoring. We made sure to feature these three areas prominently on the website.
Clickable prototype
USER TESTING
User testing findings
We tested the prototype with several of our original users and determined what was working, what changes needed to be made, some ideas that came out of the user testing, and new questions that came up. We then made adjustments to the initial prototype based on these findings. For example, we learned that including current job openings in the website would encourage more women to apply for jobs. Some of the initial research showed that women were not applying to jobs as much as men were, especially in locations in the field.
STAKEHOLDERS
We presented the research and prototype to key stakeholders involved, who then gave us the approval to proceed to deployment. Extensive coordination was required across stakeholders throughout the duration of the project. This involved regular communication with members of the Gender Parity Taskforce, data analysts, Human Resources, and Policy teams, amongst others.
DEPLOYMENT
Our Drupal developers created the site’s framework then handed it back to us to complete the site content and layout. The final design is based on the existing United Nations style guide. The site has evolved since its inception in 2016.
Visit the UN Gender Equality and Parity site.