Why a sprint? The union holds an annual membership campaign each autumn. Improving the experience of joining online will improve the performance of the campaign. But it’s a complex challenge, requiring enough lead time to build and test the solution. The sprint got everyone who needed to participate in the room together, for a week, to jump start the project.

The team: Comprised members of the UNISON Digital, local and regional organisers (who use the online form to guide conversations with prospective members), IT, corporate governance and member services to ensure that everyone could bring their knowledge and perspective to the new experience as early in the project as possible.

Preparation: Each member of the team interviewed someone who’d joined the union recently about their experience. The interviews talked to people in different lines of work, at different stages of their career, in different parts of the country. We also looked into joining experiences elsewhere. What’s it like to become a member of something in the digital age?

The outcome: The result was a redesigned joining experience that focused on asking simple questions, logically grouped, and only for the minimum amount of information to create a membership in the first instance. The prototype was tested with a number of potential members and their feedback incorporated into a design and technical brief for taking the new experience forward into production.

Deliverables: A clickable prototype of the new joining experience. Feedback from real users. And, in a first for us, we did a Facebook Live walkthrough of the team’s ideas for colleagues across the country.