2019¡Reclaim!
A Digital Platform to Combat Employee Wage Theft
A non-profit’s desire to tackle employee wage theft turns into a surprising solution focused on its own employees.
Due to the nature of their work and security concerns that come with it, the client has asked that the name of the organization not be disclosed in case studies. Alternate names have been used for organizations, states and individuals. Names of people and organizations can be provided upon request.
Project Overview
An estimated 2.1 million New Yorkers are victims of wage theft annually, cheated out of a cumulative $3.2 billion in wages and benefits they are owed. The US Department of Labor estimates that workers in New York State lose up to $20 million a week in minimum wage violations alone. While all low-income and hourly workers are vulnerable to wage theft, undocumented immigrant workers are especially at-risk of exploitation, retaliation by employers, and lacking correct information on their rights and labor laws in the US. Though most workplace laws apply regardless of a worker’s legal status, workers who are undocumented or insecure about their status are more hesitant to make demands of their employer. They are also more hesitant to contact the government or courts for assistance.
The non-profit Equality Para Todos (EPT) identified several possibilities for technology to assist and enhance the important work of organizers, advocates, and staff attorneys who support workers in addressing workplace injustices. This included digitizing client intake and automating the process of completing and submitting claims for unpaid wages and workplace harassment. By creating user-friendly digital tools, they aimed to provide access to justice for the many thousands of immigrant workers who face exploitation and intimidation in New York State.
The Brief
For this engagement, I worked with another UX designer and EPT staff, community organizers, and legal attorneys in co-designing a digital platform. During our Co-Design Phase, the project team defined the vision and goals for the digital platform, developed creative solutions and features for the platform, prepared a product prototype, and conducted one-on-one user testing with workers and advocates. This project validated or invalidated the proposed product before the organization committed resources to build the solution. All interviews and usability testing was conducted by the design team in Spanish.
The Team
Cesar Chavez
Research & UX/UI Design
David Gonzalez
Lead UX Design and Facilitator
Rodrigo Cristobal
Director of Innovation @ EPT
UX Tools & Methods:
Research: Heuristic Analysis, Competitive/Comparative Analysis, Market & Industry Research, Feature Analysis, User Interviews, Usability Testing, Affinity Mapping, Persona Development.
Design: Design Studio, Co-creation, Feature Prioritization, Wire-framing (Figma), Interactive Prototype (Figma), Specifications Documentation.
Understanding the Challenge
We began with a contextual inquiry on-site at one of the organization’s field offices interviewing four field advocates. We uncovered our long-term goal for our UX engagement and wrote “How Might We’s” on sticky notes capturing what each stakeholder said in order to see trends.
Our Long-Term Goal
Create a flexible and scalable tool to help workers and advocates understand, use and shape state employment laws.
“A major problem is that many of those affected by wage theft don’t know that they’ve been robbed.”
As-Is Scenario (Journey Mapping)
As a group with the help of the legal experts, we identified the various organizations, agencies, and procedures involved in the wage theft claim process and mapped out the as-is scenario for undocumented workers reclaiming stolen wages. Our mapping validated what we discovered from our initial user interviews –filing a wage theft claim is the first major step in a long very process to recovering stolen wages through the Department of Labor.
An advocate’s biggest pain point is verifying if a worker has experienced wage theft. Tools created in the past failed because responsibility was on workers to constantly track their hours and many times workers’ literacy is low.
Our Pivot Moment
“What if more workers filed claims with the Dept. of Labor through a digital solution? A case could be made for a systemic change and influence policy.”
With a deep mistrust of anyone or anything asking for personal information in the immigrant community we realized that the most impact would come from creating a tool for advocates working at the community organization. By equipping advocates with a tool to speed up the intake process, we could streamline their intake process, all while educating workers, providing them with tangible resources and even minimize making mistakes commonly seen when filling out the Department of Labor forms on paper.
Problem Statement
How might help community advocates empower workers to understand, use and shape State employment laws?
Co-creating a Solution
To-Be Scenario
We co-created a solution to help demystify reporting a wage theft claim. It would help workers know their rights, verify with advocates that they have experienced wage theft and enforce their rights.
In short, it would help workers and advocates know, use, and shape employment laws.
Our group used rapid sketching to bring our ideas to life and envisioned a to-be scenario in a consolidated storyboard.
Wireframing and Prototype
Based on the advice of the lawyers of the organization, my colleague and I designed an intake tool that incorporates ideas that are most likely to have an impact.
As most of the time the advocate would be sitting with the worker to complete the intake forms, we were careful to make the interface simple yet friendly, following guidelines we developed along the way: Make the experience it conversational, educational, and actionable.
Testing our solution
The prototype we developed was tested by the organization's advocates who would be using it on a daily basis with those who have experienced wage theft.
Tests were conducted with five people who work at Equality Para Todos and had previously assisted individuals in filing lost wages claims. We developed a usability testing script, tasks, and scenario for our testers.
Usability Testing Results
5 out of 5 would use the tool every day at the organization.
1 out of 5 thought the tool may be more work than writing information on the State's paper form.
4 out of 5 expressed understanding for the need of a tool that contains wage theft resources in one centralized location.
1 out of 5 was confused about the user interface: a carousel containing educational information regarding next steps didn't make sense.
“This would definitely help me because I wouldn’t have to look for information in various places. Instead, it would all be here in one place!”
Learnings
The process of verifying and reclaiming lost wages for those who have experienced wage theft is often lengthy and complex. However, there is potential to improve these processes for both individuals who have suffered wage theft and those who wish to assist them. While digital solutions can be helpful, it is important to take the time to understand the situation fully in order to build empathy and identify key areas for improvement. In this project, I learned that by gaining a comprehensive understanding of the current processes through journey mapping visualization, we were able to bring different stakeholders and organizations together to co-create and test a solution is a matter of days. This alignment of people with different backgrounds and stakes was a major success for our stakeholders. As my career as a designer progresses, I hope to further develop my skills in aligning stakeholders and building collective understanding to tackle organizational challenges.