An Unfortunate Reality: Employee Wage Theft.
A non-profit’s desire to tackle employee wage theft turns into a surprising solution focused on its own employees.
“Although I don’t really use computers, I understood this. I think I’d use this again!”
- Usability Tester
Context.
Note About This Case Study
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 will be provided upon request.
The Team and My Role
David Gonzalez
Sprint Co-Facilitator
UX Researcher
UX Designer
UI Designer
Cesar Buffington
Sprint Co-Facilitator
UX Researcher
UX Designer
UI Designer
Eduardo Fernando
Sprint Co-Facilitator
Organization Stakeholder
Tools and Methods
Tools
Figma
Webcam for remote testing
Sticky notes
Markers
Whiteboards
Methods
Sprint
User flow
Persona
User interviews
Lighting demos
Design studio
Group “art museum”
Group “heat map”
Storyboarding
Rapid sketching
Rapid prototyping
High fidelity prototype
Usability testing
The Client
Equality for All is a non-profit organization that provides assistance to anyone experiencing abuse and exploitation through legal services, transformative education, community organizing and policy innovation.
The organization sees technology playing a role in facilitating, expediting, and scaling the valuable work of the organizers, advocates, and staff attorneys who support workers in addressing workplace injustices.
The Opportunity
An estimated 2.1 million people in the State are victims of wage theft annually, cheated out of a cumulative $3.2 billion in wages and benefits they are owed. Jose, a worker I interviewed is among them.
While all low-income and hourly workers are vulnerable to wage theft, someone like Jose, an undocumented immigrant worker is especially at-risk of exploitation, retaliation by employers, and is lacking correct information on his rights and the 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 or reach out to the government or courts for assistance.
Jose himself was hesitant to do anything about his situation even though he had two kids to feed, and only sought information from the non-profit Equality for All, 5 months after he had been laid off without pay.
"A big problem is that many of those affected by wage theft don't know that they've been robbed."
- Advocate
The Project
For this engagement, the non-profit Equality for All worked alongside two UX Researchers / Designers including myself, organizers, and staff in co-designing a new digital platform.
During the co-design phase, the project team defined the vision & goals for the digital platform, developed creative solutions & features for said platform, prepared a product prototype, and conducted interviews as well as one-on-one user testing with workers & advocates.
The purpose of this project was to validate or invalidate the new product before the organization committed resources to build the solution.
All interviews and usability testing was conducted by the design team in Spanish.
Research.
Contextual Inquiry
The sprint’s research began with a contextual inquiry on-site at one of the organization’s field offices. Present in the room from the organization were various stakeholders including one attorney, the lead attorney, an org director, four advocates, and two outside UX researchers / designers, including myself.
We started by uncovering our long-term goals so that we can assemble one main long-term goal for our UX engagement. We wrote “How Might We’s” on sticky notes and wrote down everything each stakeholder said in order to see trends appear. Additionally, we asked ourselves questions regarding the future digital tool so that we could use them as a way to make our new tool stronger.
Long Term Goal
Create a flexible and scalable tool to help workers and advocates understand, use and shape State employment laws.
Questions to Consider Throughout Engagement
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Will workers adopt and use this digital solution?
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Will the DOL improve responsiveness to claims?
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Will people trust us and the tool with their data?
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Will advocates be willing to adapt and change their current working style?
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Will the framework of laws change so much, making this tool no longer useful?
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Will the tool be nimble enough to capture nuances?
Journey Map
As a group and with the help of the legal experts, we identified the various organizations, agencies, and procedures involved in the wage theft claim process and started mapping out a user journey for someone like Jose.
User Interviews
We were hyper-aware to not insert any biases when asking questions. With open-ended questions, we interviewed 5 people between 15-30 minutes each, regarding their experiences. Two of which were advocates who worked within the organization on the front lines talking to workers. The other three were workers who had experienced wage theft personally.
Based on their responses, we used the “how might we” method to write key points that were mentioned during the interviews, in hopes a trend would emerge.
After the interviews we selected the problem areas that appeared most often, narrowing the field to those that would have the most impact.
The process of speaking with a worker and noting all the details of their wage theft case (or the "intake process") would have the most significant impact if addressed with this new tool, which is why it was chosen as our focus.
Interview Takeaways
What we discovered from our initial user interviews was that 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.
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.
We also uncovered 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 organization. By focusing on helping them at their jobs, advocates would be better equipped to speed up the intake process, see up to twice as many more individuals in need of guidance, 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.
Lightning Demos
Everyone in the group brought ideas from other websites, apps or something not related to technology that they believed would be a good concept, feature, or process to add to this new solution.
Solution
The end result would be a tool built 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.
Some Features
Verify if Wage Theft Has Occurred
A section to verify if someone has experienced wage theft through a series of questions including wages paid thus far, dates and hours worked, if lunch was taken on any given day, etc. The output would be a detailed look into what the worker is likely owed.
A Digital & Educational Way to File a Claim
A section that would allow an advocate to begin an in-depth wage theft claim. It would educate the worker about the entire process and for example, why certain personal information is needed. Care is taken to phrase things in such a way that makes clear the information will not be used for immigration purposes, but rather to identify offenders who owe the worker money.
Media Upload
The ability to upload photos to their case (of their work site, of individuals, of license plates, screenshots of texts, business cards, checks or receipts received, etc.)
Resources
Actionable next steps, such as connecting them to a center for workers, a way to notify friends who have also experienced wage theft about this tool so they can also use it, and learn about other resources.
A Legal Document to Scare
Ability to print a letter from Equality for All that could be given to employer, stating that the organization is representing the worker in this wage theft case, and they will proceed with legal action unless the worker is paid what they are owed in full.
Develop.
How might we create a flexible and scalable tool to help Jose, a worker, and advocates understand, use and shape state employment laws?
Persona
“I’m afraid that if I say anything, I will be deported and I will never see my kids again.”
Frustrations
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Isn’t getting paid.
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He is being threatened with calling the police if he says anything.
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Doesn’t know who his boss is.
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Doesn’t know the company he works for.
Motivations
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Feeding his kids.
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Prevent this from happening to his friends.
- Jose
- 44 years old
- Construction worker
Goal
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Reclaiming his lost wages.
Sketching
I encouraged everyone to use sticky notes and write as many ideas for an intake tool based on all the information we had discovered days before.
Then, each person would rapidly sketch 8 designs based on the best ideas they had.
Finally, everyone would create a storyboard with their own sketches to show a story of what their solution would look like. As a group, we voted on the various storyboards in search for the best features to use in our new tool.
Wireframes
My colleague and I designed an intake tool incorporating ideas that would make the most impact (according to the organization's lawyers).
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, with little distractions.
We used extra care in making sure these designs incorporated colors that were friendly, playful and bubbly as to not heighten stress or worry among workers while telling someone their personal information.
Results.
Testing The Design
"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!"
What We Did
We wanted to test the new tool with the organization’s advocates who would be using it daily with those who have experienced wage theft.
We ran tests with five people who work at Equality for All and have helped individuals begin claims for lost wages.
Our testers had ages of / self-identify as:
25 / Female
46 / Male
51 / Female
57 / Female
65 / Male
What We Asked
Scenario
Willie is a construction worker who visited Equality for All because his boss fired him last December and he never got paid for his last week (24-28 of December). Willie would like his $400, as that was the weekly rate they paid him.
(Additional details were provided to allow the tester to input information into the tool. Details included among others: a fake address, times and dates of work, his contact info, etc).
Tasks
1. Begin Willie’s wage theft claim and fill out his personal information.
2. Fill out Willie’s boss’ information.
3. Add Willie’s wage information.
4. Add dates Willie was not paid for his work.
5. Using the tool, tell Willie how much money he can claim as stolen wages.
6. Download a letter that Willie can use to notify his employer that legal action will be taken against them unless he is paid in full.
- User
"I would recommend this because it's a way to see if they've been robbed."
- User
"Although I don’t really use computers, I understood this. I think I’d use this again!"
- User
What We Found
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.
"They can help themselves with this and have all the information they need!"
- Usability Tester
Next Steps
1. Research alternate ways of displaying educational tips/tricks and details about the process without using a carousel in the user interface.
2. Test again to verify if educational information is understood, and easily digestible.
3. Make available to workers directly by designing an app and include features that will allow them to capture photos on-site from their mobile device's camera.