Reflections on Planet 4’s 2021 Objectives

Whew! What a year! Despite the emotional rollercoaster of an endless pandemic, the P4 team did a lot of exciting stuff in 2021.

This post is a follow-up to one I wrote at the beginning of the year, to hold ourselves accountable to the objectives we set, and learn from what we accomplished (and didn’t).

Without further ado, here’s a recap of our objectives, and what we did to achieve them.

Planet 4 sites provide a trustworthy and intuitive user experience for both Greenpeace staff and end-users by ensuring design consistency across the product, and by respecting accessibility and performance standards. (Objective 4)

• Improved performance
• Reviewed and improved our consent mechanism to ensure GDPR compliance and consentful practices (and redesigned it)
• Established a Design System and aligned our codebase with it
• Enhanced the content management process (draft previews and slack notifications)
• Increased accessibility — about 60% done with Epic

In addition to improving the user experience, we also put a lot of great work into understanding pain points related to information architecture and navigation of our sites. We explored ways to address these pain points and help users find content on our sites.

Planet 4 sites have a clear information architecture and content strategy that help both the organisation and end-users achieve their goals. (Objective 2)

• Conducted an in-depth research phase that included staff interviews, end user surveys, and end-user behavior analysis (analytics and heatmap studies), culminating in a report
• Ran a card sorting exercise with P4 community and end users
• Mapped pain points to proposed solutions and success metrics
• Proposed new and improved ways of structuring information architecture and navigation
• Designed wireframes and mockups based on the proposal
• Led a 4-part series of working groups, covering content architecture, testing strategy, implementation, and technical implications
• Developed an implementation plan
• Starting planning ‘Writing For The Web’ workshops
• Selected pilot offices (Belgium, Brasil, and Nordics) and we’re ready to dive in in 2022!

Effective navigation and information architecture are key for helping users find what they’re looking for, but the next step in the journey is offering users ways to join our movement and make a difference. Building on the ‘challenges’ work in 2019/2020, we spent a lot of time this year exploring different ways to connect users with engagement opportunities.

Greenpeace NROs (National/Regional Organizations) can drive supporters to take meaningful action using global systems via Planet 4 (Objective 1)

• Discussed ControlShift integration needs with pilot NROs, and explored potential solutions both within our team and with CSL.
• Implemented the HubSpot Wordpress plugin, including aligning form styles with our Design System
• Conducted research for a quiz feature, with the help of our awesome student friends (read about their experience here!)
• Identified the need for a universal form builder that could address many needs and create new opportunities for engagement
• Conducted needs assessment, evaluated different options, and ultimately selected Gravity Forms. Defined an MVP that will kick-off in Q1 2022.

All of these exciting changes are well and good, but it takes the support of a rockstar community team to help NROs adopt new features, anticipate and acclimate to changes, onboard new staff, and so much more.

The Planet 4 team is supporting GP staff with trainings, documentation, best practices, and case studies that meet their needs and expectations. The Planet 4 team is supporting our communities of practice by facilitating spaces for generative discussions, and leveraging their expertise to improve the product. (Objectives 8 & 9)

• Launched 2 trainings in GP Academy: Planet 4 Fundamentals and Planet 4 Power User
• Audited and refreshed the Handbook
• Published 7 case studies with the help of our NRO colleagues, on topics from pop-ups best practices to front-end web components
• Conducted a community mapping exercise to understand how to better serve the constellation of web warriors across the GP Networks
• Identified two communities of practice/expertise that we want to establish intentional space for: web designers and content strategists
• Kicked off the web designers community
• Implemented a new ideas review process to center our community member’s ideas in our product development process. Discussed 14 ideas and shipped 6!
• Ran 29 community calls

And of course, last but not least, we are always trying to improve how we work within the Planet 4 Team, to make sure that everyone is focused, setting clear and achievable goals, and celebrated for their contributions. We also strive to make our decision-making processes as transparent and accountable as possible.

The Planet 4 team plans and executes work smoothly and punctually & developers working on Planet 4 can set up and work with the development environment easily and efficiently. (Objectives 5 & 6)

• Product, Data, Design, and Community Teams started using Asana for project management
• Established a bi-weekly backlog grooming session between Product, Design, and Development Leads to sync on priorities for each sprint
• Introduced quarterly team retrospectives, including appreciations
• Expanded our testing coverage
• Streamlined our testing pipelines
• Improved the process for setting up a development environment

There were a few objectives that we unfortunately didn’t make much progress on; this also warrants some reflection:

Objective 3: Planet 4 sites are using the latest standards for driving and measuring traffic from other parts of the web (search engines, social media platforms, and messaging platforms).

In hindsight, it was overly ambitious to try to meet this objective simultaneously with the work we’ve been doing on cleaning up the existing information architecture. I look forward to digging into SEO more as we roll out the information architecture changes in the new year, both identifying some quick wins we can deliver in the short-term as well as developing a more comprehensive long-term SEO strategy with NROs.

Objective 7: The Planet 4 team has a solid understanding of our audiences, and their behaviors, motivations, and interests.

This objective gets partial credit. We did a lot of user research this year and learned a lot about behavior and interests, but not specifically within the framing of specific demographics or archetypes.

It’s been a productive and rewarding year, and we’ve laid a lot of really quality groundwork to put amazing things into motion next year. We look forward to delivering the following projects in 2022 that began in 2021:

1. New information architecture & navigation features
2. Form builder, including integrations to send data to HubSpot and ControlShift
3. WCAG AA Level 2 accessibility compliance
4. v2 of the new cookies box
5. Establishing a GP-wide web designer community
6. Reviewing our custom blocks and catching up with the latest Wordpress block features

I’m so proud of our team of hustlers who are always willing to support each other, whether it’s giving feedback on design ideas, brainstorming solutions to tricky problems, responding to bug reports from our community of users, or sharing a funny video or photo to lift each others’ spirits. I’m also extremely grateful for our community who take the time to give us great ideas, quality feedback, and just generally bring such heartwarming enthusiasm to their work. Special shout-out to the Planet 4 User Council for helping me steer this (rocket)ship towards the brightest stars. Onward!

Illustrations by Storyset