Worker Rights ConsortiumNonprofit Website Redesign

Web Design and Development Case Study

Like many Internet pioneers, WRC's digital infrastructure needed modernization.

With the amount of time they spend in the field investigating factory conditions, they can't waste time getting the results online.

Screen from Worker Rights Consortium Responsive Web Design WordPress Content Management System Implementation

Screen from Responsive Web Design WordPress Content Management System Implementation

The Worker Rights Consortium (WRC) is an independent labor rights monitoring organization founded in 2000 to protect the rights of workers who make apparel and other products. WRC was pioneering in its field and the internet. Their website is a rich online repository with over twenty year’s worth of investigations, factory disclosures, and additional vital information related to workplace rights. After so many years, it was time for an upgrade.

We jumpstarted the rebuild with a rapid-prototyping approach that maximized WRC staff's input while streamlining their time commitments. Working collaboratively as one team, we built a clickable prototype and iterated on it until we had a site layout and creative direction that everybody loved.

Client and Staff Prototyping Worker Rights Consortium Responsive Web Design

Prototype Screen from Responsive Web Design WordPress Content Management System Implementation

Using the prototype as a guide, we deployed a cloud-hosted WordPress instance as a foundation for their new web presence. Then we trained the WRC staff on how to create new original content as well as migrate the research and other publications they'd produced on the legacy site. But there was one piece of the puzzle that still needed attention: the massive WRC factory database.

A database bursting at the seams

WRC's database of garment factory disclosure information has been vital to the work of staff, as well as researchers, student activists, and journalists, as a searchable archive of factories that produce college and university school apparel.

But it had also become unwieldy and cumbersome, with over 12 million records and data for more than 200,000 factories around the world. Searches, WRC and visitors found, could take up to 20 seconds to load.

The rearchitecting project facing Goodbeast wasn’t without its hurdles. To start, WRC and the Goodbeast team had to trust that the collective vision of a seamless new database was within reach. The first step came in the form of uncoupling the hulking database from the WRC site

Once that was set in motion, a full-scale cleanup was in store and the team got to work on combing through the records to give shape and substance to the invaluable archive. Goodbeast knew that doing so would not only make it a more useful resource, but one that wouldn’t have users waiting long for results.

If all went as planned, WRC could look back on hanging searches as a distant memory.

Full steam ahead

In the end, the standalone WRC database proved to be a revelation, providing unparalleled access to more accurate, usable, and precise data.

Suddenly, visitors to the new site could search without lag times. Not only that, they now had access to a full suite of accurate and up-to-date factory data, including addresses, brand and university affiliations, and contact information, all of which readily exportable for researchers around the world.

No longer hampered by a database sagging under the weight of its contents, WRC had just what it needed to make good on its promise to lead the world to a safer place.

Visit the Worker Rights Consortium website and search the WRC Factory Database.

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