Design, Development & Product Management

Reporting Platform for The Hollywood Commission Partners: Netflix, Amazon Studios, WGA, IATSE and DGA

I lead the partnership between Pluto and the Hollywood Commission through their final year of development and launch. The leadership of this project included client relations, expectation management, product definition & design, cross-functional resourcing & scheduling, delivery management, user testing, product iteration, and launch planning.

Defining the Partnership 

In reaction to the MeToo movement Kathleen Kennedy and Nina Shaw, created The Hollywood Commision with the help of Freada Kapor Klein. Now chaired by Anita Hill, the organization brings entertainment executives, independent experts, legal counsel, and advisors together to define the collective steps towards tackling the culture of abuse and power disparity in the industry. 

As a part of this mission the organization needed to develop a tool for reporting workplace misconduct. At its core this tool needed to prioritize and empower the individual, ensuring their safety in speaking out and building layers of safety, real and perceived, to support employees in this process. 

Pluto, an established partner in workplace DEI, was looking to expand the application of their data locker and data reflection technology alongside a strong design partner. Pluto’s existing data tools were built for just this type of space, providing safe data collection, secure storage, and valuable stakeholder reflection, originally developed as an in-depth surveying tool. This new space was aligned with Pluto’s vision of a more equitable internet so we got to work defining how we could develop a reporting tool, not only for the Hollywood Commission but more broadly as a feature offering for data locker users and organizations leveraging our data services.

Product Discovery

With our vision validated and the Hollywood Commision by our side we kicked off the project by going deep with their team and network of experts, pushing beyond our surface level understandings to grasp the specifics around what people experience when looking to report incidents, what organizations need to investigate incidents and what we can do to better this experience. 

Thanks to the Hollywood Commission’s unique position as a partner to all sides of the industry we were able to conduct qualitative research among many different audiences to drive insights around survivor needs, investigative practices, legal requirements, employer perspectives (Netflix, Amazon, NBC, Disney, Sony, WB, etc.), employee representative perspectives (union/guild: SAG-AFTRA, DGA, IATSE, CGA etc.), and many more areas necessary to consider in defining the direction of our reporting solution.

Product Definition & Build

Once we solidified our view of the incident reporting landscape we looked towards defining our solution. The exploratory work conducted with the Hollywood Commision provided invaluable insights into where existing processes worked and even more importantly where many were falling short. These insights built the skeleton for our solution and again we turned to the Hollywood Commision to help us flesh out from there. 

Working hand in hand with the Hollywood Commission we were able to define features, functionality, workflows, high-fidelity designs, data governance, and architectural direction for the product. We set up recurring calls in which we, Pluto, would reflect our product progress and they would offer their perspective on what was presented as well as work with their stakeholders to offer additional insights on specifics such as legal needs, organizational requirements, and survivor perspectives.  Product progress was reflected in a variety of ways throughout the development process including flow diagrams, service blueprints, low and high-fidelity designs, prototypes, and product demos. Tapping into their network allowed the Pluto team to actively negotiate the diverse, sometimes competing, needs of all sides and ensure we made product decisions in the best interest of the reporter while maintaining the integrity of the system at large and providing all sides with a precisely tailored experience to improve the reporting experience of Hollywood’s talented and vulnerable teams. 

Product design and development occurred in tandem with these efforts for 12 months prior to the final rounds of user testing. The team worked with all 5 partner organizations including over 250 volunteers to test the system. From this testing process, we triaged essential updates prior to launch and began the process of defining and designing phase 2+ iterations of the platform.

Product Launch

Pluto worked closely with the HC’s communications team to ensure launch preparedness from an audience and press perspective. Unlike many other spaces for professional platforms, Hollywood is a very public, and critical scene, so we knew all launch efforts needed to be precisely tailored for this initiative to work. We collaborated with animators and writers to develop introductory and instructional content to be published on HC’s website and within the platform. We also worked with PR and marketing experts to craft accurate and enticing positioning for publication. All while managing the positioning of Pluto’s brand within discussions of the platform, especially around security, trust, and reliability. Due to the labor strikes of 2023 the launch was delayed in order to remain responsive with the needs of our primary audience group.